Telegraph finally says sorry for absurd school fee article

More embarrassment for the Daily Telegraph, which has finally issued an apology for an absurd first-person piece decrying Labour’s imposition of VAT on private school fees, headlined “We earn £345k, but soaring private school fees mean we can’t afford to go on five holidays”.

The piece, published on May 25, detailed the family’s heartbreaking story, with the father complaining: “Before the VAT increase, we’d have gone on around five holidays a year, including several long-haul trips. In previous years, we’ve been to the US a few times and travelled around, visiting the Hamptons, but now it’s mostly Europe and maybe one long-haul trip a year.”

After it was roundly mocked on social media, the article mysteriously disappeared from the Telegraph’s website – as did the accompanying picture of the family, which turned out to be a stock photograph previously used to promote a dental surgery in Delaware, the University of California’s Center for Child Anxiety and a Holiday Inn in Singapore.

There was much speculation – including by Richard Osman on his The Rest Is Entertainment podcast – that the article was the result of AI. But earlier this month it turned out to be the work of a hoaxer.

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Georgina Fuller, the freelance journalist whose byline appeared on the article, wrote up a “case study” passed to her by the paper’s Money desk, who had received it from an as yet unnamed “outside party”. It was pulled later that day by the paper’s Money editor Lauren Davidson as social media sceptics doubted whether a family of high earners (supposedly named Al and Alexandra, with a daughter called Ali) would really have a two-year-old called Barry.

Now the paper has finally published an apology, albeit in two paragraphs on its website. “On May 25 we published an online article ‘We earn £345k, but soaring private school fees mean we can’t go on five holidays’ which included stock photographs and not, as the article indicated, images of the family referred to in the article. In addition, we have not been able to verify the details published,” it read.

“There has been public speculation the story was created using Artificial Intelligence; this is not the case. We apologise to our readers for these errors which should not have occurred.”