A takeaway owner has failed in his bid to win a second apology from a regional daily that wrongly reported his restaurant had gone into liquidation.

The East Anglian Daily Times said sorry to Bayram Alakirik less than a week after making the error in a story about his Chick King takeaway, in Bury St Edmunds.

A follow-up story, run with Mr Alakirik’s cooperation days later, reported the takeaway was “going from strength-to-strength” and included a corrective footnote and apology.

But despite this, Mr Alakirik took the Ipswich-based daily to the Independent Press Standards Organisation, claiming the follow-up story was not sufficient to resolve his issue with the newspaper.

IPSO upheld the complaint on the grounds that the initial story was inaccurate, but found the subsequent apology had dealt with the issues arising from that.

The initial story reported the restaurant, pictured, “owed £17,745.19 but had nothing to pay its debts with” and that “Station Chicken Limited, which runs Chick King, appointed liquidators”.

Complaining under Clause 1 (Accuracy), Clause 3 (Harassment), Clause 4 (Intrusion into grief or shock), and Clause 13 (Financial journalism) of the Editors’ Code of Practice, Mr Alakirik said he was the owner of Chick King, having bought it in February 2020, and it was a thriving takeaway business.

He added Station Chicken Limited did not own the takeaway and nor did the individual named in the story as being the company’s director, claiming the story’s publication had led to prank calls and customers mocking staff about the apparent closure.

Accepting the claim that the restaurant had gone into liquidation was inaccurate, the EADT said it had sourced the information about the liquidation proceedings of Station Chicken Limited from the London Gazette.

The reporter had attempted to contact the liquidators but received no response, and so assumed that the liquidation proceedings referred to the same business, but which had changed its name to Chick King.

Once alerted to this inaccuracy, the EADT had immediately contacted Mr Alakirik and the article was taken down, at which point it worked with him to write a new story that was published less than a week after it had first become aware of the issue.

However, Mr Alakirki did not accept the published story and correction as a resolution to his complaint.

IPSO found the EADT had failed to take sufficient care not to publish inaccurate or misleading information, but that it had identified the inaccuracy, set out the correct position and apologised for the error.

The Committee said this action had been undertaken and completed within a week of the publication being made aware of the inaccuracy, meeting the requirement for due promptness, and that the apology was appropriate given the nature of the inaccuracy and the potential impact on Mr Alakirik and his business.

The complaint was upheld, and the full adjudication can be read here.