Daily Mirror corrects error on young drivers

"One in four young drivers are involved in a crash in their first six months on the road". That was the startling headline that greeted readers of the Daily Mirror on 20 July this year. 

It was also inaccurate. The poll conducted by Populus for the AA upon which the Mirror's statistics were based actually showed that only 7% of the young drivers questioned were involved in a crash during their first six months.

As we found, the 23% featured by the Mirror actually refered to the proportion of young drivers who had ever been involved in an accident who had experienced a crash within their first six months. 

Full Fact contacted the Mirror about the mistake via the corrections address they suggest: ftr@mirror.co.uk. To our disappointment, the newspaper did not respond so we took the matter to the Press Complaints Commission (PCC).

Thanks to that process we were able to secure a correction from the Mirror that appeared in their page two column earlier this month. The Mirror also removed their online article.

While we're pleased that the Mirror agreed to set the record straight, the time taken to secure what should have been a simple but important correction is still some way short of what readers should expect.

The first weak link in this process was the Mirror's unresponsive corrections address, which meant that the process was needlessly complicated by having to involve the PCC.

The second problem arrived once the PCC became involved, where negotiating the correction became a protracted process of to-and-fro emails which ultimately took one month from first contact to the appearance of the correction on page two of the newspaper.

The longer it takes for a newspaper to correct a mistake, the harder it is to undo any damage caused by readers being presented with inaccurate information. In this instance the damage is limited, but the principle is an important one and should be applied to both large and small mistakes.

Full Fact has pressed Lord Justice Leveson to fix this problem as part of his inquiry into press standards, and we look forward to reading his recommendations on how this system can be improved later this Autumn.