Press regulator rules Telegraph breached Editors’ Code with inaccurate claim cyclists hit 52mph chasing London Strava segments
The Independent Press Standards Organisation said it received almost 100 complaints and “further steps should have been taken to either verify the figure – for instance, by contacting Strava – or to appropriately distinguish it as an unverified figure”…
The infamous Telegraph newspaper front page headline which claimed that London cyclists had hit speeds of 52mph while chasing Strava segments (despite that being faster than Olympic Games track sprinters) has been found to have been in breach of the Editors’ Code of the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO).
After 96 people complained about the at-length feature which was published in The Telegraph in May, and subsequently widely ridiculed online, IPSO investigated the complaints, Press Gazette(link is external) today reporting that the newspaper has been found to have breached the Editors’ Code for its inaccurate claims about 52mph cyclists “putting lives at risk”.
IPSO is the largest independent regulator of print media in the UK and promotes and upholds professional journalistic standards, assessing complaints and in cases of breaches requiring publications who are regulated by it to make corrections, or pay fines in the most serious cases.
Telegraph front page
The regulator today released its committee’s findings in relation to the Telegraph story which displayed a front-page headline claiming: ’52mph in a 20mph zone… Lycra lout cyclists are creating death traps all over Britain’. The story caused frustration, anger and some hilarity among the cycling community as the newspaper’s journalists, o myne of whom is a former BBC fact checker, claimed a cyclist (who probably “felt that was a commute well spent”) had covered a 630-metre Chelsea Embankment Strava segment at 52mph (84km/h), evidence “cyclists are turning UK roads into death traps”.
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