Correction over Milly Dowler voicemails

A SENIOR News International executive has asked the Guardian to correct 26 articles alleging the News of the World gave Milly Dowler’s parents false hope by deleting her voicemails.

A lawyer for Scotland Yard told the Leveson inquiry last week it was “unlikely” News International journalists erased messages from the schoolgirl’s phone three days after she went missing in 2002.

The Guardian published a correction to its original story from 5 July, which first made the allegation, and to the online versions of about 20 articles that repeated the claim.

Richard Caseby, managing editor of the Sun, wrote to the Guardian’s editor, Alan Rusbridger, and its readers’ editor, Chris Elliott, asking for corrections in print and on the web of 26 articles published since the first story.

Mr Caseby said: “Alan Rusbridger has a destructive agenda against the entire popular press.”

A Guardian spokeswoman said: “We have already promptly footnoted a number of articles and are considering a number of others.

“In addition, we have noted in print, including on the front page, the fact that the police now believe is it ‘unlikely’ that voicemail deletions by News of the World journalists caused Milly Dowler’s parents false hope.”