Subject: Re: Complaint about Mailonline article

From: dmg Corrections <corrections@dmgmedia.co.uk>

Date: 5/18/2018 2:33 PM
To: "peter.heimlich@gmail.com" <peter.heimlich@gmail.com>

Dear Mr Heimlich

Further to the below email, thank you for your patience. We appreciate having the opportunity to respond to the matters
you have raised.

At the outset, we would like to apologise for any frustration caused by the lack of response to your communications to
Mailonline asking for comment on this matter. I understand that these date back to the 5th of January this year, some 2
days after the article was published (and also removed, given that it was live on the website for a total of 14 hours).

Before moving on to the substance of your complaint, including the questions you pose with regard to our processes, I
would like to address this and offer an explanation.

The article, as I am sure you are aware, was published in the early hours of the 3rd of January – 01.09 GMT to be precise.
We were in correspondence throughout the day with a separate complainant (upon which I will expand later) and the
article was removed from the website at 15.05 GMT later that day.

We received an email from you, sent to the corrections address and also to our head of communications Sean Walsh, on
the 5th of January, which referred to the removal of the article from the website and posed a number of questions
regarding our internal processes.

As this had been sent to our head of communications, and given the nature of the questions, this was assessed to be a
media inquiry, and the Managing Editor’s office did not directly respond.

A number of other inquiries were received from you, variously sent to addresses which feed into the Managing Editor’s
office, and also to Sean Walsh. Again, these were judged to be media requests for comment on our internal procedures,
and it was felt that these would be best dealt with by Mr Walsh.

As I understand it, Mr Walsh did not reply to these requests, with the result that no response at all was forthcoming to your
emails. We do take all complaints seriously and endeavour to respond to them all – in this case, due to a
misunderstanding about the nature of your correspondence, we did not address your concerns when you initially brought
them to our attention, for which I apologise.

Turning to the substance of your complaint, I believe it would assist if I initially described the exact procedures leading up
to the publication of the article and also those that led to its removal.

We received information from a member of the public in the early hours of the 3rd of January, which described the events
which went on to form the article. After further questioning, the source provided Mailonline with images purporting to be of
her and a friend at the event in question, showing that she had been there that evening.

An editorial decision was made to publish the article using the information which had been given to us, with the
associated pictures as illustration. The piece was viewed as a lighthearted and amusing tale of mild peril being avoided,
which obviously showed Mr Byrne in a good light, and had been provided to us by a member of the public of her own
volition.

Later on that day, we received an email from someone claiming to be the person who featured pictorially in the article –
she did not, though, share the same name as the person who had provided the story.

An investigation was commenced, and our Managing Editor’s team contacted the Evening Standard’s news desk, who
had followed up on the story. It became apparent that Mr Byrne had had the story drawn to his attention, and had
expressed some surprise, stating that it was erroneous.
This, alongside our investigation prompted by the complainant who stated that social media pictures of her had been used
in the article without her knowledge, led the Managing Editor’s office to take the decision to remove the article from the
website, given that the evidence now indicated that the story was likely to be untrue.

The situation had altered drastically since the story had originally been provided, when it had been published in good faith
that the information given to us was accurate. We would note that the information received from the news desk at this time
was that the person who had provided the story had been contacted and still maintained the veracity of the tale. On the
balance of probabilities, however, it was removed.

Subsequent to the removal of the article, Mailonline contacted the complainant to advise that the story had been taken
offline, and that it was hoped that this addressed her concerns – she was asked to contact Mailonline again if she wished
for further assistance. However, no further correspondence was forthcoming, and we closed our file on her complaint.

Your complaint under the Editor’s Code is made under Clause 1 (Accuracy), sections (i) and (ii), these being:

i) The Press must take care not to publish inaccurate, misleading or distorted information or images, including headlines
not supported by the text.
ii) A significant inaccuracy, misleading statement or distortion must be corrected, promptly and with due prominence, and
— where appropriate — an apology published. In cases involving IPSO, due prominence should be as required by the
regulator.

We would disagree with the contention that the publication is in breach of Clause 1 (i). Upon receipt of the information
provided by the source, the news desk questioned her further, and received several images, one of which claimed to show
her at the gig in question. No money was sought or given in return for the article, and there did not seem any reason to
disbelieve the story which, though fairly remarkable and considered newsworthy, was in the end uneventful.

Turning to Clause 1 (ii), again we would not concur that Mailonline breached this aspect of the code, as the article was
removed promptly after a complaint was received from someone directly affected by it (the woman claiming to be the
person in the images). The removal of the piece was considered to be an adequate response due to the fact that the
complainant herself seemed to be satisfied with it. Your subsequent emails were considered, as previously advised, to be
requests for comment to be treated as a press inquiry, and not a complaint per se.

I hope that the above explanation has proved useful to you. Without prejudice to our described position, I would stress
that we take all complaints about accuracy seriously, and are keen to resolve your complaint.

To this end we would be willing, subject to the final approval of the editor, to publish an article in our clarifications and
corrections column at the top of our news page. It would be live for 24 hours on this page, and then be archived where it
would remain searchable for the lifetime of the website.

If this is something which you would consider as a possible resolution to your complaint, we would propose some wording
along the following lines:

On January 3 we published an article with the headline “Ed Byrne saved my life!” which described an incident in which the
comedian saved a fan from choking while in the middle of performing a comedy routine. Although we received and
published the information in good faith from a source who claimed to have been the fan in question, we were quickly
made aware that Mr Byrne had no recollection of the event, and as a result the article was removed from Mailonline later
that day. We are happy to set the record straight.

If this is something which you would consider, please do let us know.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

Yours sincerely

Paul Hutchinson
Editorial Compliance Manager
Mailonline

--------------- Original Message ---------------

From: dmg Corrections [corrections@dmgmedia.co.uk]
Sent: 15/05/2018 22:36
To: peter.heimlich@gmail.com
Subject: Re: Complaint about Mailonline article

Dear Mr Heimlich

We are in receipt of your correspondence with IPSO. I am writing to let you know that your complaint has been received
and an investigation commenced; however, it will only be possible to respond substantively to the issues you have raised
in the next couple of days. I hope this meets with your understanding, and look forward to writing again soon with a full
response.

Yours sincerely

Paul Hutchinson
Editorial Compliance Manager

Mailonline