The complaints had been made by Full Fact, a fact-checking organisation, relating to two front page articles. The first article reported that a paper released at the G8 summit revealed that "Britain spends more on aid as a percentage of national income than any other country in the world - while British taxpayers suffer through an age of austerity". In fact, while the UK paid out, as a proportion, more foreign aid than any other G8 country, five other countries (Norway, Luxembourg, Sweden, Belgium and the Netherlands) paid more in percentage terms and the United States paid more in cash terms.
The second article reported on the state of Britain's schools, claiming that "violent behaviour in our classrooms has doubled in just a year". It claimed that 1,000 pupils had been excluded per school day in 2009/10, compared with 452 in 2008/09. Full Fact said that these figures were incorrect: the 1,000 figure was actually the total number of exclusions per day for the year 2008/09 including verbal abuse and threatening behaviour (not just for physical violence). The claim that violent behaviour had "doubled" in a year was inaccurate: the previous year, the equivalent figure was 1,103.
The Daily Mail accepted that there were errors in the two articles. The correct position, in regard to the first article, was that Britain spent more on aid than any other major country. It also immediately acknowledged the error in the second article, explaining that it had inadvertently compared a previously reported figure for physical assault (around 450 pupils a day) against one which included verbal abuse and threatening behaviour (1,000 pupils a day). The figures had been put to the Department of Education prior to publication and had not been challenged. The newspaper offered to publish corrections in both cases (in its page 2 Corrections column and online) in addition to amending the two online articles. Full Fact did not consider that correcting the record on page 2 satisfied the requirements of the Editors' Code in regard to "due prominence".
The Commission took the opportunity to set out its thinking as to what constitutes due prominence, making clear that it "has strong regard for the location of the original article". This could not be the "only determining factor", however: "The Commission will consider the full circumstances surrounding the complaint: the nature of the breach of the Code; the scale of the error; the full context of the story; and the existence or otherwise of a designated corrections column". In these cases, the Commission decided that "while the mistakes were sloppy, the issues were not personal to the complainant and had not caused personal harm. In addition, in the Commission's view, the errors did not render the coverage of either story to be wholly inaccurate, including on the front page". Page 2 corrections were sufficient in these cases.
Commenting on the adjudication Stephen Abell (pictured), Director of the PCC, said: "The issue of ‘due prominence' as set out in the Editors' Code will never be an exact science and, as the adjudication makes clear, there will always be legitimate calls for newspapers and magazines to highlight corrections with greater clarity. It may be appropriate in some cases for a newspaper or magazine to publish a front page correction. However, whilst the errors in these two cases were unsatisfactory, the Commission judged that the publication of suitable corrections on page 2 was a sufficient offer which met the ‘due prominence' requirement of the Editors' Code".
To read the adjudication, please click here.
The correction about the first article has been published in yesterday's Daily Mail, on page 2 and online. The text has also been appended to the online version. The second correction will be published later this week.
The PCC has monitored the issue of prominence for several years. To see its most recent statistics on prominence, please click here.
