The Royal Gazette has received the following decision from the Media Council of Bermuda in which the Council found that The Royal Gazette should apologise for errors in stories concerning the Bermuda Cricket Board’s associate membership of the International Cricket Council.As a signatory to the Media Council’s Code of Conduct, th eroyal Gazette is obliged to accept the ruling and to publish it, along with the apology.However, it should be noted that The Royal Gazette has formally expressed its disagreement with one part of the ruling, namely that the BCB should have been given more time to respond to a question concerning staffing. The newspaper disagrees with the finding because the BCB never requested additional time.Complainant name: Bermuda Cricket BoardClauses Noted: 3Publication: The Royal GazetteComplaintThe Media Council of Bermuda received a complaint by the Bermuda Cricket Board (BCB) against The Royal Gazette. At issue were a series of three articles, starting with one published on November 10, 2011 headlined “ICC status under threat”. The BCB asserted that claims made about Bermuda’s status as an Associate Member of the International Cricket Council (ICC) were inaccurate and misleading and thus in breach of Clause 3 A, B and C of the Code of Practice.BackgroundThe November 10 article claimed Bermuda’s ICC status could be under threat because the BCB had failed to meet two criteria, the first related to the number of staff and the second related to the number of qualifying teams.The November 16th article headlined “No concerns with Bermuda’s status, says ICC boss Vieira” set out the official position of the ICC and included comments from the BCB and Stephen West, the Evening Cricket League organiser, that were highly critical of the first story.On November 17, The Royal Gazette published a clarification that conceded the BCB had met the staffing criteria alongside a story headed “Questions remain over BCB’s team claims”.On December 9, The Royal Gazette issued a correction, which the BCB said fell short of an apology, which it believed was warranted.AdjudicationThe Council held that the headline in the first story was inaccurate and misleading. Bermuda’s ICC status was never under threat. The Royal Gazette’s assertion about the staffing criteria was not correct and its claim that the BCB had failed to meet the requirement as to the number of teams was not clear.The Royal Gazette said in the article of 10th November that the BCB ignored its request for a response on the question of staffing. The Council is not satisfied that the BCB was given sufficient time to respond to the newspaper’s queries on that point.The November 16th article did go some way towards correcting the inaccuracies created in the first article. But it continued to advance the position that Bermuda did not meet the team requirement.The clarification published the following day failed to address the misleading headline. In the view of the Council, the clarification ought to have been a correction.On December 9, The Royal Gazette published a correction headlined “Correction: Bermuda’s ICC status”. The Council is of the view that the correction did not sufficiently make amends for the misleading nature of the original article and the confusion created by the subsequent articles.DecisionThe Media Council requires The Royal Gazette to publish an apology (see apology in adjacent story) to the BCB. The apology should be published within seven days on any day other than a Saturday and should be positioned prominently on The Royal Gazette website and in the top half of the front page of the Sports section in the newspaper, under the headline “Apology to the Bermuda Cricket Board”.