Sunday 25 March 2012

Mail on Sunday apologises, again, to the bank it said was on the 'brink of disaster'

The 'Corrections and clarifications' column in today's Mail on Sunday includes these four items:

The MS Society has asked us to make clear it does not advocate hyperbaric oxygen treatment for people with multiple sclerosis. Centres mentioned in a health article last week are run by a different charity called MS National Therapy Centres.

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Carol Vorderman did not say she left Countdown because Channel 4 bosses wanted ‘fresh meat’. She said they wanted ‘fresh faces’. Our story on March 11 about her interview with Piers Morgan also said Ms Vorderman is a maths graduate. In fact it is engineering.

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The Royal Navy did not introduce year-round white-topped caps during WW2 as our report about new uniforms said last week. Black tops in winter continued until some time after the mid-1950s.

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On January 15 we published a picture of Tory Party fundraiser Rickie Sehgal with a woman captioned as his wife. In fact it was Mrs Anjana Patel, who is unrelated. We apologise for our error.

However, the most noteworthy statement is a second apology to Société Générale.

It was on 7 August last year that the Mail on Sunday claimed Société Générale was:

in a 'perilous' state and possibly on the 'brink of disaster'.

It was suggested at the time that the article might have been inspired by a fictional 12-part series run by Le Monde.

As its share price began to fall, the bank issued a statement:

'categorically and vigorously' denying all 'unfounded rumours' about its position.

An apology appeared on MailOnline two days after the original article:

We now accept that this was not true and we unreservedly apologise to Société Générale for any embarrassment caused.

But in November, it was announced the bank was going to sue for defamation:

Société Générale said it was not satisfied by the apology, which it said was "hard to find" on the website and had not appeared in the newspaper.

It will claim damages to compensate for loss of business resulting from the article and for the "cost of mitigating the damage" caused by the article.

The Mail on Sunday's reaction to that was:

"The Mail on Sunday has already apologised for publishing the article. Any claims for damages will be resisted."

But today there's another apology - and one which includes mention of the payment of damages:

Société Générale – On August 7, 2011, we reported Société Générale was in dire financial difficulties because of its exposure to Greek debt, and that the French government was on standby to bail out the bank. We accept that this was untrue; the bank was not in serious financial difficulties, nor was it on the brink of insolvency or in line for a bailout from the French government. We have apologised to the bank and have agreed to pay damages.

3 comments:

  1. I would like the Mail to pay the British public (via taxes perhaps) £10k per day, in perpetuity, for persistently slandering the British people and feeding a constant stream of false information and biased hateful bile into the public domain since first supporting Hitler and Moseley in the 1930s.
    Can we backdate the payments to then?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Is the Leveson Enquiry aware or the existence of your database?

    Keep up the great work!

    ReplyDelete
  3. "Our story on March 11 about her interview with Piers Morgan also said Ms Vorderman is a maths graduate. In fact it is engineering."

    They really sound like they have 12-year-olds writing for them with writing like this.

    ReplyDelete

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