Aberdeen Journals Article on Braeside Place Development - Update

Following the Aberdeen Journals articles on local objections to the proposals to develop the Braeside Primary School site, the Community Council wrote to the editor to complain that their article was inflammatory and misleading. (see our web article on 27th December below) Aberdeen Journals neither acknowledged nor responded to the letter.

Indeed, the paper went on to publish letters from readers that criticised residents in the area based on their original article.  The Community Council again wrote to the Journals editor to complain about the publication of letters. Once again no acknowledgement or response was forthcoming.

On 13 January, a complaint was submitted to the Independent Press Complaints Organisation (IPSO) regarding the inaccuracy of the story and the disclosure of information that could lead to the identification of individuals.

In their response to the complaint, IPSO say that the story was not inaccurate :

"Newspapers have the right to choose which pieces of information they publish, as long as this does not lead to a breach of the Code. In this case, focusing on specific categories of concerns did not make the article inaccurate or misleading, where the document you provided also stated that “100 People made comment on the plans with 374 points of objection” and the categories of objection highlighted were recognised by the council. As such, we did not identify sufficient grounds to investigate a possible breach of Clause 1 on this point."

The Community Council highlighted the article printed the names of some of the objects and that these individual's personal details could be obtained from the source that they had quoted.  We suggested that this was not only a potential threat to those individuals, but also a possible breach of the General Data Protection Regulations.  IPSO responded :

"You also said the article breached Clause 2 (Privacy) because it named some of the objectors. IPSO cannot take forward third-party complaints that are not about accuracy. As you were not complaining on the residents’ behalf, we were not able to consider this part of your complaint further."

A copy of the IPSO response was copied to the Aberdeen Journals.  

The full IPSO response to our complaint can be viewed by clicking here

Aberdeen Journals have made absolutely NO contact with the Community Council over any of the various correspondence on this matter.

The Community Council is disappointed at the response from IPSO and disgusted at the disrespect and lack of response from Aberdeen Journals.