The Telegraph UK apologies to Masakorala

Amid many conspiracy theories and news broadcast about a consignment of a shipment of waste to Sri Lanka, the UK-based Telegraph had published a damaging report sighting Shipper’s Academy Colombo CEO Rohan Masakorala, a frequent guest columnist on FT, as the importer of the said consignment.  

Whilst the article has caused serious damage to a professional in the international trade industry in Sri Lanka, the Editor of The Telegraph had taken quick remedial action to apologies and correct the mistake on the paper and the online edition via the compliance office.

In the interest of readers of our guest column we reproduce the published correction by The Telegraph and the email received by Rohan Masakorala along with the correction.

The apology to Masakorala is as follows.

Dear Mr. Masakorala,  

Human remains found in 100 containers of exported recycling sent from UK to Sri Lanka, 23 July 2019

‘Human remains hidden in recycling shipments’, The Daily Telegraph, 24 July 2019

Your emails about this article have been passed to me to consider.

Let me say immediately how sorry we are about this error, which arose from a simple misunderstanding by one of our Foreign Desk staff. We obviously very much regret it. We will therefore publish the following in our usual ‘Corrections and Clarifications’ spot in the daily newspaper:

Rohan Masakorala: An apology

Our article ‘Human remains hidden in recycling shipments’ incorrectly said that Rohan Masakorala was identified as the importer of containers brought into Sri Lanka that appear to hold human remains. In fact, neither Mr. Masakorala nor his company have anything to do with the shipments concerned, and there is no suggestion that he is in any way involved. We sincerely apologise for the error. 

We have also corrected the online article and added a version of the above, appropriate for context, at its foot. 

I trust that this can resolve the matter.

Yours sincerely,

Jess McAree

Head of Editorial Compliance

111 Buckingham Palace Road

London, SW1W 0DT 

telegraph.co.uk.