Tag Archives: daily star

Apology

November 16, 2009 – 8:00 am

dailystarON 18 September 2009, we published an article in which Warren Furman, also known as the Gladiator “Ace”, was reported as denying “internet rumours” that he had raped Jordan. In doing so, the article implied that these “rumours” were sufficiently serious to require a response from Mr Furman.
In fact the “internet rumours” consisted of very few ambiguous posts on an internet chat forum.

They have since been deleted. We wish to make it clear that neither the posts nor any other matter, provided the basis for the false suggestions that Mr Furman may have raped Jordan. We apologise unreservedly to Mr Furman for the distress and offence caused to him by the article appearing to suggest otherwise.

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Major Errors, Newspapers | Also tagged , , | Comments

Apology

November 5, 2009 – 8:00 am

dailystarIn the Daily Star of 27 October 2008, we published an article and photographs of Olga Kurylenko which stated that Ms Kurylenko had arranged a nude photoshoot immediately after the filming of Quantum Of Solace. We now accept that Ms Kurylenko did not arrange any such photoshoot after Quantum Of Solace and that this was incorrect.
We wish to set the record straight and apologise to Ms Kurylenko.

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Major Errors, Newspapers | Also tagged | Comments

Express papers offer up more apologies to the McCanns

October 17, 2008 – 8:00 am

I previously wrote about the U.K.’s Express Newspapers making prominent apologies to Kate and Gerry McCann. Now the papers have stepped up with another round of apologies, including this one from the Express:

IN articles published between July and December last year we suggested that the holiday companions of Kate and Gerry McCann might have covered up the true facts concerning Madeleine McCann’s disappearance and/or misled the authorities investigating her disappearance.

We also reported speculation that one member of the group, Dr Russell O’Brien, was suspected of involvement with Madeleine’s abduction. We now accept that these suggestions should never have been made and were completely untrue. We apologise to Jane Tanner, Russell O’Brien, Fiona Payne, David Payne, Matthew Oldfield, Rachael Oldfield and Diane Webster to whom we have agreed to pay substantial damages which they will be donating to the Find Madeleine Fund.

The Guardian has some background:

The Daily Express and Daily Star have today printed apologies to the so-called “tapas seven” friends of Kate and Gerry McCann as part of a legal settlement.
Daily Express – ‘tapas seven’ apology Daily Express: ran apology on page 5
Today’s apologies, on page 5 of the Daily Express and page 3 of the Daily Star, come ahead of a statement about the “tapas seven” settlement to be read out in the high court in London at 10.30am.
Richard Desmond’s Express Newspapers, publisher of the Daily Express and Daily Star, will also pay the group £375,000 in damages, according to a report yesterday by the Sky News crime correspondent, Martin Brunt. The money will be donated to the Find Madeleine Fund.
Under the headline “Tapas seven – an apology”, both papers apologised for publishing “completely untrue” suggestions that the friends may have lied about the case …
More details of the holiday companions’ settlement with Express Newspapers are expected to be outlined in the high court statement before Mr Justice Eady.
The legal action, undertaken for the “tapas seven” by law firm Carter-Ruck, follows big payouts by British papers to the McCanns and to Robert Murat.
In July, Murat accepted more than £600,000 in damages from 11 British newspapers after he was libelled in more than 100 articles.
The Express Newspapers-owned Daily Express, Sunday Express and Daily Star; Associated Newspapers’ Daily Mail, Evening Standard, and Metro; Mirror Group Newspapers’ Daily Mirror and Sunday Mirror and Scottish Daily Record; and News Group’s Sun and News of the World acknowledged that the stories they had run about Murat over nine months were entirely untrue and should never have been printed.
In March, Kate and Gerry McCann accepted £550,000 from Express Newspapers after the Daily and Sunday Express, the Daily Star and Daily Star Sunday ran numerous defamatory articles after their daughter Madeleine disappeared from the Praia da Luz resort in Portugal on May 3, 2007.

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Major Errors, Newspapers | Also tagged , , | Comments

Sorry Ozzy

June 9, 2008 – 8:00 am

OUR February 21 report of the BRIT Awards headed “Ozzy’s Freak Show” reported that Ozzy Osbourne had thrown the BRIT Awards into chaos after he suffered a health scare, toppling over twice, just before the Awards ceremony.
We claimed that BRITS bosses held emergency talks about whether to send the Prince of Darkness to hospital and suggested that Ozzy may have had to withdraw at the last minute from presenting the Awards with his family.
We also claimed that as a result of his health scare Ozzy had to be ferried around in an electric buggy.
We now accept that such allegations are completely untrue. We are happy to make clear that Ozzy was fit and well, did not suffer a health scare and that there was no question of Ozzy having to go to hospital or being unfit to fulfil the engagement.
We apologise to Ozzy and his family for any embarrassment or distress caused by our article. As a mark of our regret we have agreed to pay Ozzy’s legal costs and substantial damages, which Ozzy will donate to the Sharon Osbourne Colon Cancer Program. Link

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Major Errors, Newspapers | Also tagged , , | Comments

Is the Daily Star a “rogue newspaper”?

April 8, 2008 – 6:22 pm

Roy Greenslade of The Guardian thinks so, and he made a three-part argument earlier today:

Case one: yesterday it apologised in the high court to the Italian footballer Marco Materazzi who was infamously headbutted in the chest by Zinedine Zidane in the 2006 world cup final. The paper falsely claimed that the attack was prompted by Materazzi making racist comments.

It was not an error made once. The Star repeated the allegation in a series of articles. It was not the only paper to publish the claims, but the Star was more blatant than most. Anyway, lies are part of that disgraceful paper’s special stock in trade.

Case two: last Wednesday the Star carried a front page story about footballer Andy Cole that was, in all but name, an apology for a previous story that accused him of beating his wife.

Case three: three weeks ago the Star was one of the four Express Newspapers’ titles that carried a front page apology to the parents of Madeleine McCann for libelling them in a series of inaccurate and prejudicial stories. It also apologised formally in the high court.

But there is no sign of the Star’s editor, Dawn Neesom, stepping down for making a string of errors. Why? Because she has a proprietor who clearly doesn’t care about ethics (just a county to the east of London for him)…

Regret coverage of the Express Newspapers’ apologies is here. Another case against the Star is here.

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Major Errors, Newspapers | Also tagged | Comments

Daily Express, Daily Star issue front page apologies, pay damages

March 19, 2008 – 9:00 pm

Today was a historic day for newspaper apologies. A sad, shameful, embarrassingly historic day.

Two UK papers controlled by the same owner (Express Newspapers) issued front page apologies to a British couple, Kate and Gerry McCann. The apologies will be repeated in the related Sunday editions of both papers, the Sunday Express and Daily Star Sunday*.

In more than 100 articles, the papers had repeatedly and forcefully suggested that the couple were responsible for the disappearance of their young daughter. Roy Greenslade of the Guardian summed up the papers’ work:

This was no journalistic accident, but a sustained campaign of vitriol against a grief-stricken family. The stories were not merely speculative, but laced with innuendo which continually made accusations against the McCanns on the basis of anonymous sources and without any hard evidence.

Wild claims, often made by unattributed sources to Portuguese newspapers, were then spun even more negatively by the Express and Star titles. Of course, they were not the only papers to carry prejudicial material, but they were by far the worst.

Realizing that it could not win in court, and could not defend their work, Express Newspapers negotiated a settlement with the couple that includes the apologies and a payment of roughly $1 million. This is the apology published by the Daily Express (”The World’s Greatest Newspaper”):

The Daily Express has taken the unprecedented step of making a front-page apology to Kate and Gerry McCann.
We did so because we accept that a number of articles in the newspaper have suggested that the couple caused the death of their missing daughter Madeleine and then covered it up.
We acknowledge that there is no evidence whatsoever to support this theory and that Kate and Gerry are completely innocent of any involvement in their daughter’s disappearance.
We trust that the suspicion that has clouded their lives for many months will soon be lifted.
As an expression of its regret, the Daily Express has now paid a very substantial sum into the Madeleine Fund and we promise to do all in our power to help efforts to find her.
Kate and Gerry, we are truly sorry to have added to your distress.
We assure you that we hope Madeleine will one day be found alive and well and will be restored to her loving family.

It was a questionable decision to begin the apology with a statement that seems to suggest that the paper is doing something noble, and purely of its own choosing. A front page apology was a necessity, and a long overdue one at that. So many of the offending stories had been on the front page that to offer anything less in terms of placement would have been unacceptable.

The Express, and the Daily Star (apology here), took this step because they finally came to see they had been wholly irresponsible and wanted to avoid a massively expensive lawsuit. I don’t mean to suggest there isn’t any genuine remorse at the papers, but it’s not the sole motivation for the apologies. It’s likely not even the dominant one.

Since this website launched in fall of 2004, the most notable apologies have consistently appeared in the UK press. But two papers with front page apologies on the same day, and two repeats to come? Yes, you could call that unprecedented. But the actions that led to this event bring other words to mind.

*Correction April 9: The name of the Daily Star Sunday was initially and incorrectly written as the “Daily Sunday Star.” It has been corrected. Thanks Smylers!

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Major Errors, Newspapers, Regret Articles | Also tagged , , | Comments

Sorry for saying you fondled your daughter

January 21, 2008 – 8:00 am

OUR article last Tuesday headed “It’s Sven Giggle Eriksson” pictured Mr Eriksson in a hotel restaurant with a young lady.
We wrongly assumed that the lady was an admirer and suggested that he was fondling her.
In fact the lady was Lina, Mr Eriksson’s daughter, with whom he was having a normal fatherly embrace.
We apologise to Mr Eriksson and his daughter for the embarrassment and distress caused by the publication of the photographs and incorrect assumptions made about them.

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Major Errors, Newspapers | Also tagged , | Comments

AP explains Paris Hilton and the drunken elephants

November 20, 2007 – 8:00 am

Last week the Associated Press ran with a story about Paris Hilton raising awareness about the plight of drunken elephants. Though many, including the AP, are willing to believe anything when it comes to Paris Hilton, this particular tale was completely false. (Our previous post with the original story and correction is here.)

AP had picked it up from the World Entertainment News Network (see some of their previous work here and here). According to an article in the New York Times, WENN says it had spotted the tale in the Daily Star, a UK tabloid (see some of their previous work here and here). An AP stringer in India saw the WENN piece and wrote it up; then AP put it on the wire before waiting receiving a reply from Hilton’s spokesperson.

The Times contacted Jesse Washington, AP’s entertainment editor, for an explanation. “The irony in the story was obvious,” he said. “But it doesn’t change the fact that you have to verify it. This time we didn’t, and we got burned.”

The story also contains one of the more amusing explanatory paragraphs to have graced the pages of the Times:

For the record, it is apparently true that elephants there get drunk on farmers’ homemade rice beer, then go on rampages. But it is not true that Ms. Hilton, who served jail time this year for violating probation after a drunken driving arrest, told reporters, “The elephants get drunk all the time. It is becoming really dangerous. We need to stop making alcohol available to them.”

While AP did put out a correction to its customers, it didn’t offer a full explanation until the Times came calling. Perhaps it will offer a more of a proactive admission the next time it gets caught pimping Paris Hilton and drunken elephants. Or just hold off and wait for the appropriate verification before piling on.

After all, did this story really require such a rush to publish?

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Newspapers, Wire service | Also tagged , , , | Comments

Apology

September 24, 2007 – 8:00 am

IN our article “He made my hair fall out” on 13 October, 2006, reporting the divorce of Dan Hipgrave and Gail Porter, we said that Mr Hipgrave’s unreasonable behaviour during the marriage had caused Miss Porter’s stress-related alopecia and had made hair fall out.
We would like to make it clear that Mr Hipgrave’s behaviour did not cause Miss Porter’s condition and we apologise to him for any distress or embarrassment we may have caused.

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Newspapers | Also tagged | Comments Off