Daily Mail Fail: Paper published pensions story it now claims is false

The Daily Mail yesterday ran an article criticising Believe in Scotland as having made a false claim about pensions which Believe in Scotland then thoroughly debunked. We have now discovered that the Daily Mail previously published the same claim about the UK state pension being the worst in the developed world. We, (only half-jokingly) wonder if the paper should now report itself to the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO) admitting that it must have either misled its readers in 2018 or is misleading them now?

So why is the paper in such a muddle now, contradicting itself and creating an embarrassing Scottish Daily Mail Fail? 

First of all, they sourced their story from Twitter trolling by a biased unionist campaigner who lacked the expertise to understand the issue or simply wished to convince The Mail to mislead its readers, then the paper itself didn't check the facts - nor did it realise that its own UK Policy Editor previously broke the news about UK pensions being the worst in the developed world in the national edition of the paper.

Taking action

BiS Chief Executive Gordon MacIntyre-Kemp has written to the editor asking for a retraction and a right to reply which would be given the same amount of space in the paper and online as the original misleading story. There are four reasons that we have demanded the right to reply. 

  1. The story is incorrect, as we have proven already the statement that the UK pays the worst state pension in the developed world is a factual statement. We provided the evidence that the claim was factual prior to the article being published (quotes from the same email were used) thus proving that the paper was aware the story was false. 
  2. The Daily Mail itself ran the same story claiming the "UK had the worst state pension in the developed world" and the same headline in 2018 when the research was first published by the OECD. Thus, the paper is either misleading its readers now or was misleading them in 2018.
  3. The article headline states that Believe in Scotland claimed that the UK state pension was the 'worst in the world' we never have, we have always stated that the "UK Pension is the worst in the developed world". The former is untrue the latter is a fact, we have always used the factual statement. 
  4. For the Daily Mail to go ahead and publish a story that was based on unsubstantiated Twitter trolling based on misrepresentations of Believe in Scotland's actions is both biased and unprofessional. 

We await the Daily Mail's response to our request for a retraction and an equal right to reply.

The facts are not even disputed.

Links to other media outlets that claimed that the UK has on of the worst pensions in the developed world".

The Guardian - "UK has lowest state pension of any developed country" 

By Gordon MacIntyre-Kemp