04863-24 Hunt v johnogroat-journal.co.uk

Summary of Complaint

1. Theodora Hunt complained to the Independent Press Standards Organisation that johnogroat-journal.co.uk breached Clause 1 (Accuracy) of the Editors’ Code of Practice in an article headlined “Wick eyesore property up for auction next week but where’s the ‘sitting tenant’?”, published on 24 May 2024.

2. The article – which appeared online only - reported on a vacant shop previously leased by the complainant. The article reported: “An eyesore former shop in Wick up for auction next week claims to have a sitting tenant who left the town under a cloud after several failed business ventures.” It said that the “commercial property at 53 High Street is being sold by [named auction house] with the opening bid price of £19,000 and claims to have Teddy’s Dessert Bars Ltd as the sitting tenant – one of many companies created by Theodora Kennedy Hunt (Teddy Hunt)”.

3. It said that “Teddy’s Dessert Bars Ltd, which intended to run an unlicensed cafe at the premises, was dissolved on January 2 this year” and that the “shop was described as a ‘damn disgrace’ and eyesore for locals and tourists, at a recent meeting of the Royal Burgh of Wick Community Council (RBWCC).” It said that the shop “had its fittings ripped out and is filled with a jumble of assorted furniture and bric-a-brac allegedly placed there by Ms Hunt. At a meeting at the start of May, RBWCC members said that rodents had been sighted through the window and there are open jars of food lying about.” The article included images of the property’s contents seen through a window, and one image was captioned “Teddy Hunt is named as a sitting tenant despite leaving the town over a year ago and dissolving the business registered at the site.”

4. The article said that the newspaper “informed the auction house on Thursday (May 23) that the company named on the website as the occupier, holding a “rolling tenancy” at 53 High Street, was dissolved. Despite that, the erroneous details remain on the page” and a “staff member at [the named property auction house] noted the incorrect details on the website and said it ‘would be looked into.’”

5. The article also contained an image of the complainant accompanied by the caption: “The so-called business entrepreneur Teddy Hunt left Wick under a cloud after several failed business ventures.” The article went on to report the complainant’s “visions for Wick’s high street transformation turned out to be empty promises when a beauty clinic was open for a single day and a bar/restaurant lasted a few weeks before closing its doors”.

6. The complainant said that the article was inaccurate in breach of Clause 1 for several reasons. Firstly, she said that the headline of the article and first paragraph implied that she was the ‘sitting tenant’. She said that the article later acknowledged that she was “named as a sitting tenant despite leaving the town over a year ago and dissolving the business registered at the site’. She said that the article used the auction house’s error to draw attention to her and to suggest that she was responsible for the current state of the building, whereas she believed it should have focused on the auction house’s misrepresentation.

7. The complainant said that referring to her as having “left the town under a cloud after several failed business ventures” was inaccurate and misleading and presented her in a “bad light”. She said she previously ran a successful estate agency business which ceased to operate for personal reasons. The complainant also said the bar she opened was well-attended but had to close due to harassment she was facing from members of the public and local businesses.

8. Further, the complainant said that the claim that the shop “had its fittings ripped out and is filled with a jumble of assorted furniture and bric-a-brac allegedly placed there by Ms Hunt” was inaccurate as the fittings had been ripped out before her tenancy. She also said it was misleading to state “RBWCC members said that rodents had been sighted through the window and there are open jars of food lying about.” She said the rodents were already present at the property when she took over the tenancy of the building and that she was not responsible for leaving jars of food open in the premises. She said she had reported the pest issues to the landlord, but pest control had not been called. The complainant said she gave notice to leave the building, and she had not been a tenant of the property since 2023. She said that since she had vacated the property, someone had placed boards against some of the windows and had therefore accessed the inside.

9. The complainant also said it was inaccurate to state Teddy’s Dessert Bars Ltd, “intended to run an unlicensed cafe at the premises”. She said she never intended to run any “unlicensed” businesses from the building in question and that it would have been fully licensed as required. She said, had Teddy's Dessert Bars Ltd moved beyond the planning stages, she would have applied for the relevant licences and health and safety certificates. She said she had not applied for a licence as the building was not fit to open a food establishment in.

10. Further, the complainant said the article inaccurately referred to the length of time the beauty clinic and the bar were open, “a single day” and “a few weeks” respectively. She said the correct position was that the beauty clinic operated beyond the open day with ad hoc opening hours on an appointment only basis for three to four weeks, and while the Valhalla bar did not have set opening hours she believed it was open for around six to eight weeks.

11. The complainant said that it was inaccurate to refer to her as a “so-called business entrepreneur”. She said she ran a successful dairy goat business, for which she won two innovation grants and had recently been nominated for a business award.

12. The complainant also said she had not given permission to the journalist to use the image of her and there was no reason for it to be used in this article. She further said that it was used to suggest she was responsible for the condition of the premises referred to in the article.

13. The publication did not accept a breach of the Code. It said the claim that the complainant was a “sitting tenant” was taken directly from the auction house’s website as indicated in the article. It provided a screenshot of the website to support its position. It said the headline was supported by the article because, while the publication acknowledged the business had closed, it said the auction house’s website said the complainant’s previous business was still the tenant of the building and therefore linked her to the property. It said the second part of the headline was a question to reflect the questions being asked in the community about what had happened to the promised jobs which the various business ventures were supposed to create in the high street.

14. In regard to “several failed business ventures”, the publication considered this claim was completely accurate. It said the complainant ran two businesses in Wick (Valhalla bar and the beauty clinic) for a very limited time and registered another (Teddy’s Dessert Bars) that never traded. It said the Valhalla bar had not run in Wick since around February 2023 and was listed on Companies House in the name of the complainant, to an address which had now been demolished, with no accounts filed, and with a petition to wind up the business. It provided a link to the relevant Companies House page to support its position. It said none of the complainant’s businesses in Wick appear to have been a success in anybody’s terms.

15. In terms of the current state of the property, the publication said it reported on allegations were made by members of the community, including community councillors at a public meeting of the Royal Burgh of Wick Community Council. It said a journalist attended the meeting and took notes - which it provided – and included comments such as “I had a look the other week and there were jars of food lying open and you could see that there were rodents there.” It also provided minutes from the meeting, which said “Action 8: JC suggested reporting the state of the empty former Semi-Chem premises as a health hazard to environmental health as there is apparently containers of food lying open in the premises“.

16. The publication also said the article clearly distinguished between fact and comment - that fittings had been ripped out and the furniture and bric-a-brac placed there – and the conjecture from the community that it was the complainant who had placed them there. It said this was indicated by the term “allegedly”.

17. The publication said that the claim about rats simply reported what had been said at a public meeting, and was not inaccurate, misleading or distorted in any way. It said any apparent longstanding issue with rats in the town was not relevant to the report in the article or the specifics of them being seen in a property that was left this way. It said there were plenty of well-looked-after properties in Wick where rats were not an issue.

18. In regard to the “unlicenced cafe”, the publication said this was a statement of fact based on the nature of the business, as described by the company's listing on Companies House ("Nature of business (SIC) 56102 - Unlicensed restaurants and cafes). It provided a link to the site to support its position.

19. In response to the opening hours of the various businesses, the publication said it was its understanding that the beauty clinic held an open day and was not subsequently open for business beyond that, and that the bar only opened for a few weeks before closing. It said it based its claims on its own observations and conversations with other members of the community, as well as speaking to a former employee of the bar. It said it considered the information accurate based on this. It further said that the complainant accepted she had not been operating a business in Wick since January 2023 and given the bar opened in December 2022, it would suggest its timescales were accurate. However, it said as there was no written record of when the businesses actually traded, it accepted that it was possible those timings were slightly different to the information it had, but did not consider the article contained any significant inaccuracies on this point.

20. On 2 August, as a gesture of goodwill, it offered to amend the claim to: "However, her visions for Wick’s high street transformation turned out to be empty promises when a beauty clinic was open on an ad-hoc basis after an initial open day and a bar/restaurant lasted a few months before closing its doors.”

21. In response to the publication’s position, the complainant said Teddy's Dessert Bars Ltd was registered to a property on Bankhead Road, Wick, however the article related to a 'premises' at 55 High Street in Wick. She said she did not intend “to run an unlicensed cafe at the premises' on the High Street. She said she was starting a joint venture with the post office but had to withdraw once she saw the premises.

22. The publication said that the full sentence that appeared in the article was: “"Teddy’s Dessert Bars Ltd, which intended to run an unlicensed cafe at the premises, was dissolved on January 2 this year and was registered at Bankhead Cottage in Wick which was recently demolished to make way for turbine convoys”. It said the article made clear the business was registered at a now demolished location, but this was not the same location as where the business intended to operate from. It further quoted a letter the complainant had sent to Wick Community Council where she said: "I had originally viewed the property with the intention of running the Post Office. [...] The limited company ‘Teddy’s Dessert Bars’ was only set up for the purpose of the application with the Post Office. However, I had to close that company (which never traded) when I felt compelled to withdraw from the application process.” The publication further said that the auction site also claimed that Teddy's Dessert Bars Ltd was the 'sitting tenant' in its advert for the sale of the property. It said it was clear the complainant’s intention was to run the dessert bar from that location.

23. The complainant said she did not accept the publication’s proposed amendments and referring to her “empty promises” implied she was in the wrong and did not mention the harassment she had faced.

Relevant Clause Provisions

Clause 1 (Accuracy)

i) The Press must take care not to publish inaccurate, misleading or distorted information or images, including headlines not supported by the text.

ii) A significant inaccuracy, misleading statement or distortion must be corrected, promptly and with due prominence, and — where appropriate — an apology published. In cases involving IPSO, due prominence should be as required by the regulator. 

iii) A fair opportunity to reply to significant inaccuracies should be given, when reasonably called for.

iv) The Press, while free to editorialise and campaign, must distinguish clearly between comment, conjecture and fact.

Findings of the Committee

24. The Committee first considered the headline, which the complainant said linked her to the property. It noted that it was not in dispute that the complainant had previously leased the premises, although she did not operate the business from the site. The headlined referred to her as the “‘sitting tenant’” in inverted commas which suggested this was a claim rather than a statement of fact. The article later clarified this by explaining this claim was attributed to the auction house: the “commercial property at 53 High Street is being sold by [named auction house] with the opening bid price of £19,000 and claims to have Teddy’s Dessert Bars Ltd as the sitting tenant”. It went on to report “Teddy’s Dessert Bars Ltd, which intended to run an unlicensed cafe at the premises, was dissolved on January 2 this year”. It further acknowledged that the auction site had made a mistake as the newspaper had “informed the auction house on Thursday (May 23) that the company named on the website as the occupier, holding a ’rolling tenancy’ at 53 High Street, was dissolved. Despite that, the erroneous details remain on the page”. The Committee were of the view that the headline was supported by the article which made sufficiently clear the complainant was no longer the sitting tenant but had previously been the “sitting tenant” of that premises, and had been inaccurately described that way on the auction site. There was no breach of Clause 1 on this point.

25. The Committee also found that it was not inaccurate for the article to focus on the complainant, rather than the auction house, where she had been the previous tenant of the building which the article focused on. Newspapers are entitled to select which piece of information they publish provided they do not breach the Code. Where the article focused on a building and the community’s response, it was not inaccurate to focus on the previous tenant. There was no breach of Clause 1 on this point.

26. Next the Committee turned to the claim that the complainant “left the town under a cloud after several failed business ventures” and referring to her as a “so-called business entrepreneur”. The Committee noted that the complainant accepted she had two businesses in Wick which ceased operating after a few months and one business that never opened at the property she had leased. In these circumstances, the Committee did not consider it inaccurate to refer to them as “failed business ventures” or refer to her as ““so-called business entrepreneur”. It was content the article had set out the basis for its characterisations: her “visions for Wick’s high street transformation turned out to be empty promises when a beauty clinic was open for a single day and a bar/restaurant lasted a few weeks before closing its doors”. Further the Committee did not consider presenting someone in a “bad light” represented an inaccuracy and noted that the Code does not require articles to be balanced. There was no breach of Clause 1 on these points.

27. The Committee did not consider omitting successful businesses the complainant had previously ran or currently ran, or the fact she had faced harassment from other businesses in Wick was inaccurate, where the article focused on the town of Wick, and a building that the complainant had previously leased. As stated above, newspapers are entitled to select which material they publish provided it does not breach the code. Not including the complainant’s other businesses or the harassment she had face did not represented a breach of Clause 1.

28. The Committee considered the article’s claim that the shop “had its fittings ripped out and is filled with a jumble of assorted furniture and bric-a-brac allegedly placed there by Ms Hunt” and “RBWCC members said that rodents had been sighted through the window and there are open jars of food lying about.” The Committee noted that the article had not stated the complainant had ripped out the fittings and filled it with a jumble of assorted furniture and bric-a-brac but rather made this clear it was an allegation by the use of the term “allegedly”. The article also included images which illustrated the “jumble” of furniture which could be seen through the windows of the premises. Where the article had clearly distinguished the claim as comment, there was no breach of Clause 1 (iv).

29. Turning to the rodents and open jars of food, the Committee acknowledged the complainant’s position that there was a rodent problem at the premises prior to her lease and that she was no longer responsible for the premises. The Committee considered it was not inaccurate to state “RBWCC members said that rodents had been sighted through the window and there are open jars of food lying about”. The publication was able to support this by providing notes from the meeting which supported the claim: “you could see that there were rodents there”, and the minutes also said “JC suggested reporting the state of the empty former Semi-Chem premises as a health hazard to environmental health as there is apparently containers of food lying open in the premises”. Further it was not in dispute that the property had an issue with rodents and that there were food containers present, nor did the article state who had left them there or when the rodent problem had begun. There was no breach of Clause 1 on this point.

30. Complainant said the article inaccurately referred to the length of time the beauty clinic and the bar were open. The Committee did not consider stating “a beauty clinic was open for a single day” was significantly inaccurate from the complainant’s position that its opening hours were on an ad hoc, appointment only basis for three to four weeks following the open day. Similarly, where it appeared that the bar opened in December 2022 and closed in January 2023, and where the complainant stated it had been open to “six to eight weeks” it was not inaccurate to refer to the bar as lasting “a few weeks before closing its doors”. There was no breach of Clause 1 on these points.

31. In regard to the reference that the complainant “intended to run an unlicensed cafe at the premises”, the Committee was satisfied that this was how the business had been registered on Companies House “("Nature of business (SIC) 56102 - Unlicensed restaurants and cafes)” and the complainant had previously indicated that she wished to run Teddy's Dessert Bars Ltd in conjunction with the Post Office at this site. Where the business was categorised as an unlicensed business and never operated it was not inaccurate to state she had “intended to run an unlicensed cafe at the premises”. There was no breach of Clause 1 on this point.

32. The Committee next considered the photograph of the complainant which appeared in the article. The Committee noted that the article focused on a building in Wick which the complainant had previously leased. The Committee did not consider the publication of the complaint’s photograph was inaccurate, where it simply showed her likeness and that article had named her as the “sitting tenant”. There was no breach of Clause 1 on this point.

Conclusions

33. The complaint was not upheld under Clause 1.

Remedial action required

34. N/A

Date complaint received: 23/04/2024

Date complaint concluded by IPSO: 05/11/2024