Paper retracts claims of TV faking

The Sunday paper The News of the World admitted yesterday that its articles claiming the investigative television reporter Roger Cook faked his programmes were wrong.

Mr Cook settled his libel action against the paper after it admitted that the reports two years ago should never have been published.

The paper had claimed that members of the Cook Report team conspired with criminals to set up crimes that Mr Cook could easily expose.

But yesterday the paper's solicitor, Julian Pike, said that The News of the World was "happy... to make it clear that they accept that neither Mr Cook nor Carlton nor the editors, producers, legal advisers and researchers were a party to any deception".

Mr Cook served a libel writ on the NoW in April 2000 after the allegations appeared in three articles. Eight other members of the Cook Report team, including its former editor, Mike Morley, also sued for libel.

Yesterday Mr Cook's solicitor, Ian Bloom, said that Mr Cook had no alternative to legal action because if the allegations went unchallenged his career as an investigative journalist would have been "irreparably damaged".