The Sun admitted to making up a story about Huhne (or at least, that it couldn't produce ANY evidence to backing up the 'story'). It didn't apologise, and its 'correction' ... well, here's Roy Greenslade on that:
In other words, the main page one page story breached the first, and arguably most important, clause of the editors' code of practice, about accuracy.
Happy to set the record straight? You bet. Happy because the commission did not feel it necessary to censure the paper for publishing claims that it obviously could not prove.
Happy because it published the mealy-mouthed correction seven weeks later at the foot of page 2. Happy because it had got away with a flier. And it didn't even have the grace to apologise.
And note a further irony. The story at the top of page 2 was a piece of "press freedom" propaganda against parliament's royal charter on press regulation, headlined "MPs told: hands off our press".
In the ongoing argument about the provisions of that charter, one of the key points of at issue is over the powers the regulator should have to determine where corrections should be placed. Editors do not want to be ordered where to place corrections. They prefer that they should have due prominence - the current situation.
Does anyone really think this correction on page 2 was adequate compensation for that page 1 splash?
Greenslade goes on to note that other papers had reprinted the 'story' - has Huhne really had a satisfactory outcome from the PCC????
See below for the original article.
Page 1 splash, 13 March - a story that The Sun could not substantiate
The Sun published the front page shown above on 13 March. Under one
of its trademark headlines, the "exclusive" article stated that Lib-Dem
MP Chris Huhne had been ridiculed on his first day in Wandsworth jail.
