Bijou Catering Ltd. and the Evening Herald

The Press Ombudsman has decided not to uphold a complaint that a restaurant review published in the Evening Herald on 1 June 2012 was in breach of the Code of Practice for Newspapers and Magazines.

The complainant, Bijou Catering Limited, maintained that the review concerned was inaccurate in its description of the meal that the newspaper’s restaurant critic had consumed (Principle 1), that the reviewer had conflicting personal interests which had not been disclosed to his editor (Principle 2), and that it was for these and other reasons unfair (Principle 3).

The newspaper responded with a detailed statement from its reviewer stating that the restaurant’s complaints about the review were unsupported by evidence, and that the review was a fair and balanced article by an experienced and unbiased food writer about his experience. It offered to send a different critic to the restaurant, but this offer was turned down by the complainant.

The impossibility of deciding on issues of truth or accuracy in a dispute about two conflicting descriptions of, and opinions about, a meal which has already been consumed, may readily be imagined. The unverifiability of the statement that there were four prawns in the prawn cocktail, as the restaurant maintained, rather than three, as the review asserted, is not the only example of this difficulty. Overall, therefore, the differences between the complainant and the newspaper in the context of the Code of Practice were, in the opinion of the Press Ombudsman, either insufficiently significant to justify upholding the complaint under Principle 1, incapable of resolution, or within the normal parameters of a restaurant review by a bona fide critic.

Bijou Catering Limited complained under Principle 2 that the writer had a conflict of interest in the matter, and that the he did not disclose this to his editor. The strength of the complainant’s belief about this alleged conflict of interest, and about the significance of a connection between the reviewer and a nearby retail premises (with which the complainant has apparently had a chequered relationship) is patent. However, the complainant’s belief in this regard was entirely based on circumstantial evidence, or on assumptions derived from such evidence. In this context it is also worth noting that each of the assumptions made or conclusions reached by the complainant was explicitly rejected by the writer of the article concerned.

The Press Ombudsman decided, therefore, that there was insufficient evidence to uphold such a serious allegation about the article concerned and that, in these circumstances, the question of what, if anything, should have been disclosed to the editor of the publication did not require a determination.

As there was no evidence that the statements in the article were obtained by misrepresentation, harassment, or subterfuge, as is required to support a complaint under Principle 3, this element of the complaint is also not upheld.

23 October 2012