The latest set of cases from the Press Complaints Commission make for interesting reading.

A Sun article published in December claimed that prison officers were being told they could not order strip searches for transgender prisoners.

The article was referred to the PCC on the following grounds:

• That the article incorrectly stated that prisoners were required to undergo strip searches and intimate searches;

• That it inaccurately referred to the guidelines as "new" and implied that they were official rules rather than proposals;

• That it falsely implied that squat searches had recently been banned for female prisoners;

• That it incorrectly stated that any male to female transgender individual could request to be searched by a female - this only applied to those at a fairly advanced stage of the process.

In resolving the issue The Sun opted to amend the article online to include a quote from the the complainant, Jane Fae, stating that the story was wrong. The paper also published a letter from Ms Fae disputing the story.

Because the original article remains, albeit with an extra quote at the bottom, it is unclear to what extent The Sun engaged with the issue of whether the report was actually wrong.

PCC rules stipulate that neither party involved in a complaint can publicise the details of negotiations over resolving the matter – so The Sun's justification for the story and their chosen means of resolving the complaint are not known.

Did The Sun settle the matter in such a way it did because it still stands by the original report, or because it was more palatable than printing a full correction?

It is a clear example of why the PCC should publish more information about the negotiations that lead the resolution of complaints.

For our part, Full Fact believes that if a newspaper accepts an error with a report, a full correction to the article should be published and we will always push for this.

That way it will be much clearer when a paper accepts that what it reported was not accurate.

(Hat tip: Minority Thought)