Tabloid Watch reports that last year in May the Sun, Daily Mail and Telegraph ran stories claiming that ‘gypsies’ had trashed a £5m police helicopter and caused other damage to property.

But the stories did not stack up and they had to apologise.
First came The Sun retraction:

Surrey Police have not blamed gipsies [sic] for an attack on their force’s helicopter, no staff in their operations rooms were threatened by gipsies and no gipsy [sic] site was being targeted for a raid as we reported on May 14. We apologise for the mistakes and are happy to set the record straight.

Several months later in November the Daily Mail also quietly apologised. But the Telegraph’s article by Ben Leach is still available online even though it seems solely based on the Sun story.

MacGuffin at TW adds:

1. If, as in this case, several newspapers print the same lies, and the PCC then brokers a retraction on one of those articles, the PCC should be pro-active in ensuring the other versions are also removed and an apology published.

2. If the original story was trailed on a newspaper homepage, the apology/retraction/clarification should be trailed there as well.

Would that be so difficult?

We have emailed the PCC to find out the status of the Telegraph article.