Last month, four of the UK’s biggest papers printed stories that made the striking suggestion that there were parts of the country with a life expectancy lower than ‘earthquake-hit Haiti or war-torn Iraq’.

The Sun, The Telegraph, The Daily Mail and The Mirror all claimed that men on the Gurnos estate in Merthyr Tydfil could expect to live just 58.8 years. Full Fact found that this was actually the ‘healthy’ life expectancy – the amount of time men could expect to enjoy good health. The true life expectancy was closer to 70 years, higher than both Iraq and Haiti.

Today we’re pleased to report that the Daily Mail and the Mirror have acknowledged the error and have agreed to correct the record. The Daily Mail’s online article has removed the inaccurate claims and now carries a clarification, whilst the Mirror is due to print a correction in the coming days.

This comes after weeks of negotiations between Full Fact and the papers involved through the Press Complaints Commission, which insists on secrecy in all complaints until the matter has been resolved. Given that the local health board were happy to clarify the matter (and indeed had already done so on Welsh TV) and the inaccuracy was so plain, we are disappointed that the erroneous reports were allowed to stand for so long.

The Mail was actually the quickest to take corrective action and proffer a clarification, whilst the Mirror initially withheld their correction until they had received confirmation from the health board (something they clearly didn’t require before printing the original article).

Full Fact is still trying to elicit similar corrections from The Telegraph and The Sun, however as these are subject to the ongoing complaints process at the PCC, we can’t as yet comment. We are nevertheless pleased that we are now halfway to successfully correcting the record on this score.