The Mail on Sunday newspaper has again been forced to correct the record after continuing to publish ย misinformation about climate change by its reporter Davidย Rose.
Yesterday the newspaper was forced to publish an apology about a story from over a year ago that repeated false claims about a study by American scientists suggesting that the so-called โhiatusโ in global warming never occurred. The newspaper wrongly stated that the study was based on โfaulty dataโ and had โduped worldย leadersโ.
The Mail on Sunday published a correction that admitted the paper had been forced to admit it brokeย the Editors’ Code ofย Practice.
The code states: โA significant inaccuracy, misleading statement or distortion must be corrected, promptly and with due prominence, and โ where appropriate โ an apologyย publishedโ.
The incident highlights the weakness of newspaper regulation in the face of repeated and deliberateย breaches.
In the past twelve months, five of Mr Roseโs articles have been shown to be false, with IPSO adjudications published on 6 August, 17 September and 24 September 2017.
Only a ย month ago DeSmog UK covered the latest David Rose controversy after he wrote that โthe world average temperature in January 2017 was about the same as January 1998โ. The article implied this was evidence for a global warming โpauseโ โ an argument of which climate science deniers are fond, no matter how many times scientists point out its failings.
Given these repeated breaches of the Editorsโ Code of Practice over an extended period, the question now is whether IPSO will now undertake a standards investigation into โThe Mail onย Sundayโ.
The most recent complaint was made by Bob Ward, Policy Director of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change who has spent the past year pursuing the matter.ย The length of time between the publication of the article and the apology highlights an issue with the current IPSO process, whereby the disinformation can exist uncorrected for lengthyย periods.
In 2013, Media Matters named the Mail on Sundayโs sister paper, the Daily Mail ย โ2013 Climate Change Misinformer of the Yearโ for stirring up of โfaux controversies about climate scienceโ, and in 2014, Greenpeace made an official release noting that David Rose is โnot a credible sourceโ, as hasย Wikipedia.
For more background on David Rose’s track record of disinformation, see his full profile on DeSmog UKโs ย Disinformationย Database.
