Your Noon Briefing: The Record’s Vow front page, Scottish Greens, etc

VARIOUS complaints against a Daily Record front page, published just ahead of September’s vote on Scots independence, have been rejected by the press standards body, IPSO.

It concerns The Vow, which, says IPSO, “reported that [political party leaders] David Cameron, Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg had signed a promise which would guarantee more devolved powers to Scotland, and protect the NHS, if Scotland voted against Scottish independence”.

As reported here, on allmediascotland.com, no sooner had the vote taken place, delivering a No verdict, but there was speculation about whether a Vow document actually existed.

But, says the Independent Press Standards Organisation, in its decision not to uphold the complaints: “The newspaper had provided confirmation from the offices of the three party leaders that they had lent their signatures to the agreement, and had contributed to the wording of ‘The Vow’.

“As the party leaders had confirmed that the content of the ‘The Vow’ had accurately reflected their agreement, the [IPSO] committee was satisfied that the presentation of the article had not been significantly misleading.

“The concern that there was not a formal document beyond what had featured in the newspaper, and that the party leaders had not physically signed the agreement, did not raise a breach of the [Editors’] Code [of Practice].”

Read the full adjudication, here.

However, IPSO did uphold another set of complaints against the Record, as explained here: “Six complainants complained to the Independent Press Standards Organisation that an article headlined ‘The Vow delivered’, published by the Daily Record on 27 November 2014, and an article headlined ‘The Vow delivered: Scotland to be responsible for more tax and welfare worth billions of pounds in radical devolution package’, published on the Daily Record’s website on 26 November 2014, were inaccurate, in breach of Clause 1 (Accuracy) of the Editors’ Code of Practice.”

The complaints were over economic figures, for which the paper later offered an apology.

Read the adjudication, here.

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MEANWHILE, the Perthshire Advertiser has also had a complaint against it rejected by IPSO.

It follows a report of a court hearing and a subsequent acceptance by the newspaper that, while a not guilty verdict had been reported, it should have provided more details of the case for the defence.

The IPSO ruling can be found here.

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BEGINS the front page of The Scotsman today: “The Scottish Greens are threatening to take legal action against STV after the broadcaster excluded the party from a pre-election leaders debate.

“Green co-convener, Patrick Harvie, is ­furious that his party has not been included in the live debate involving Nicola Sturgeon, Jim Murphy, Ruth Davidson and Willie Rennie.”

Read more, here.

The story is widely reported elsewhere.

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BEGINS The Drum media and marketing magazine: “The Drum has launched its second study into the experiences of women working in the marketing services industries.

“The study’s objectives are to build a picture of the experiences of women in the marketing industries today, identify and highlight women’s views of the industry, and identify the challenges facing women in the sector.”

Read more, here.

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BEGINS The Guardian: “Cover prices at both weekend editions of the Sun [and its Scottish editions] will go up this week.

“The cover price of the Sun on Sunday will rise by 20p to £1, and the price of its Saturday counterpart will be hiked by 10p to 70p.”

And the paper further reports: “The Sun on Sunday [again, also its Scottish edition] is adding former Arsenal footballer, Thierry Henry, as a columnist, and is planning to expand its existing sections.”

Read more, here.

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BEGINS Jim Chisholm, on Scot-Buzz: “John McGurk in his article [earlier this week, on Scot-Buzz, as noted here], ‘All Nationalists Now?… But We Prefer Right-Wing English Newspapers’ asks why we proud Scots seem so willing to turn to the Sassenach press for our daily fix.”

And he proceeds to consider… here.

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