The story of a fake case study

I realise I'm behind the times with this, but I wanted to hone in on a recent Telegraph story involving a fake case study. 

You might have already read about how the Telegraph were forced to pull the article and post an apology. Or you might have heard it being dissected on the Prospect magazine podcast with Alan Rusbridger and Lionel Barber. 

Either way, the story looked at how a banker and his wife on a joint salary of £345,000 were forced to reduce their holidays (five) and switch from shopping at Waitrose to Sainsbury’s as a result of Labour’s VAT policy on school fees. 

Later, the story was questioned on Bluesky by journalist Ian Fraser, with Fraser noting that the images accompanying the piece were not of investment banker Al Moy, 38, and wife Alexandra, but actually stock images from 13 years ago. And then actually, using his journalistic nous, he searched high and low for evidence that these two people exist, and found zilch.

I don’t want to knock the freelance journalist involved. Apparently, she was handed the case study by the Telegraph and told to interview Al and write up the piece. It seems like a phone interview did take place. Yes, the names of the children – Ali, Harry and Barry – might rhyme and be unexpected, but honestly, would you question or ask the the case study to provide evidence of their children’s names? No. And the freelance journalist wasn't involved with the pictures, apparently.

Following the suspicions raised online, the article was pulled.

A spokesperson for Telegraph Media Group said: “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.

“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.”

Press Gazette said it understands the case study was set up by a PR working for financial planning firm Saltus, which was referenced in the article. The journalist has received a lot of stick. She’s a well-established successful writer who has been working for the newspaper for a long time. 

But what has clearly happened is that a PR has sold in a story with a fake case study so the company could be highlighted in the press. Was this a junior PR under immense pressure? I have no idea. But it certainly isn’t a positive outcome for the PR or financial company incolved. I’ve written before about dubious case studies who seem to say yes to every press request, when there appears to be an abundance of bending of the truth. But least they exist (though I'd prefer they didn't lie. And I do avoid these people). 

But what can we learn from this? I don’t think this is common practice in the industry, though I think it does happen more than we think. It's an embarrassment for the PR agency and financial company involved and many journalists will now avoid both. The attempt to gain positive PR has led to a PR disaster, and distrust. There’s lessons to be had from everyone involved. Many case studies come from PRs and no doubt more questions need to be asked, and we certainly can’t just accept them at face value. While the journalist involved has shouldered a lot of the burden, this should also fall at the Telegraph’s feet. Where was the subeditor? Why didn’t the editor of the section raise questions? Is it down to cost-cutting or just one piece that has fallen through the cracks on a busy day? One thing is for certain, as teams are cut, it widens the gap for more errors. And with that, more mistrust of the media.