For those of you who have ever believed the utter made-up drivel in the Daily Mail...

[MayaAngelCool]

be enlightened!

I've just seen this, really pleased they upheld it. I sent a complaint to the PCC about that story, it was shocking that they would just make so much stuff up, no professionalism at all.

I am sure they will learn a very important lesson from this

i imagine most daily mail journalists are mn posters

FirTree Quite, I think it just means they will try harder not to get caught out in the future!

It is bizarre that "The newspaper apologised for the mistake. It said that it was standard practice in such high-profile cases for two alternative stories (plus supporting quotes) to be prepared in advance"- is that an admission that they usually make up the quotes?

Fir, on that point I did consider the irony of believing a possibly falsified newspaper report of an actually falsified newspaper report!

But hey, it's the DM so who cares?

Standard practice to have two versions ready to go but appalling to have made up such details. Glad they.got caught.

It must have been up longer than 90s, most of mn saw it!

I thought that, Stealth. It whipped round Twitter, but I'm sure it was up for several minutes.

The editor of the daily mail resigned today over the scandal over a fabricated story concerning these trial of Amanda Knox. He lookedvisibly shaken as he addressed the media, saying only that mistakes had been made and he was "truly sorry". The acting editor declined to comment.

Wow this is fun

Aw, Steeeealth! You had me going fora split second there! I was about to do a cartwheel!

Yes, I too knew the 'holding' article thing was common practice; just not when fleshed out with such precise details.

How many petards does it take for the DM to finally hang itself?

The link on the website was only up for you to see and click on for a minute or two before they took the link away, but the weblink address still worked for sometime if you had it copied and pasted somewhere or someone sent it to you. I remember thinking how dumb they were to have only removed the link from their page but not actually taking the page down. They are idiots really.

oh that makes sense MMC, thanks. Everyone who came on MN will have clicked whichever link the OP of that thread posted.

All newspapers do this. take the facts of big cases, spin them, and prepare stories ready to go to print the minute a verdict is announced. ThE Guardian will do this too. Some clerk pressed send too soon on the wrong button. It's a non story.

There is a big difference between on the one hand ensuring you have pre-prepared skeleton stories ready in advance for both "guilty" and "not guilty" verdicts and into which you can drop detail from the actual case and, on the other, simply making up 'quotes' out of thin air. Which is what the Daily Mail did.

The former is standard editorial practise and is done to save time. The latter is bare-faced lying and, quite possibly, libellous.

But I suppose it is a non-story inasmuch as it's yet another "The Daily Mail demonstrates it's full of low-life lying bastards and you shouldn't believe a fucking word it prints" piece. That is so blatantly obvious it's like saying "Water remains wet."

I am glad - I have refused to even click on DM links since that day!

So bloody pleased they've been hauled over the coals for that. I managed to get a screen grab of it at the time.

Having a page ready to go is one thing, they over-stepped the mark.