The Telegraph has been reprimanded by a press standards watchdog after it published a completely made-up story about a wealthy banker complaining about the impact of school fee rises.
Ian Fraser, a freelance journalist and author, complained to the Independent Press Standards Organization (Ipso) that the Telegraph had breached its editors’ code of practice in an article headlined: “We make £345,000, but high private school fees mean we can’t go on a five-day holiday.”
The article, published online on May 25 last year, reported on the impact that private school tuition increases had had on a named couple and their three children.
The story explained how investment banker Al Moy, 38, and his wife, Alexandra, had a joint salary of £345,000 and had two children in fee-paying schools. He said the couple also had a daughter, Ali, a son called Harry and a two-year-old boy called Barry.
The article claimed that following the addition of VAT to school fees, introduced by the Labor Party on 1 January 2025, the couple were forced to switch supermarkets from Waitrose to Sainsbury’s, reduce their gardening to once a month and take fewer long-distance holidays abroad to make ends meet.
But the family did not exist.
Last year, after suggesting that AI generated the entire article, Press Gazette revealed that it was written by a real journalist, based on a real phone interview with a man who appears to have misled the reporter and given him a false name.
Press Gazette said the case study was created by a PR working for financial planning firm Saltus. The story also referenced Saltus’s research estimating the average cost of school fees over a lifetime.
Fraser was the first to point out to Bluesky his concerns about the use of archival images to illustrate the family, which were taken more than a decade ago. Fraser said he could also find no trace of any banker named Al and Alexandra Moy anywhere online except the Telegraph.
The complaint was upheld and Ipso required Telegraph.co.uk to publish its decision to remedy the code breach.
The award said: “While the publication accepted that it had not taken due care with the accuracy of the article, it said it was satisfied that any errors had been rectified quickly and prominently.
“It said the article was ‘deleted’ from the internet and its social media as soon as the issues in question arose. It added that shortly after publication it became clear that there was a problem with the images, which had led to an internal investigation. It said the investigation revealed that the issues that arose arose from failing to carry out pre-publication checks.”
On June 18, the Telegraph published a separate apology saying it had been unable to verify the published details.
A Telegraph spokesperson said: “The Telegraph takes any breach of the editors’ code of practice seriously. Identifying the complexities of this matter, we took immediate action to remove this article online and from social media. We published an apology in line with Ipso guidance, reinforcing our commitment to the highest editorial standards, which had sadly fallen short on this occasion. After launching a thorough internal investigation, we have strengthened our pre-publication processes.”
A spokesperson for Boldspace, the PR agency acting on behalf of Saltus, said: “The individual was identified through a respected research partner. Following this, we received an initial call to confirm whether he matched what was required for the story. “The freelance journalist who wrote the article for the Telegraph then had a separate, independent 45-minute call with the individual directly in which he was asked detailed questions and ultimately concluded that his story stood.
“Saltus was not involved in the process of identifying the case study or offering it to the journalist for an interview, nor was Saltus involved in the interview that took place between the case study and the journalist.”
