Readers complain to Daily Mirror after website suggests Welshman was the aggressor in stick confrontation

The Daily Mirror website has been criticised after suggesting that a visitor to the north of Wales was threatened by an angry local with a stick – when the opposite was true.

The daughter of the man involved complained after the newspaper ran a story ‘Man camping in Wales 190 miles from home is confronted by angry local with stick’.

“Please correct this headline before I take the matter further. This is my father,” Heledd Roberts said. “He didn’t react in an ‘angry’ way nor was he ‘furious’ he just politely asked them to leave.

“And my dad never touched any stick, he was threatened with the stick by the tourist. Delete this now.”

The newspaper changed the headline to ‘Man camping in Wales 190 miles from home wields stick at angry local confronting him’ an hour later after readers complained.

“This is gross clickbaiting of the highest order. Absolutely disgusting way of generating clicks,” Guto Davies tweeted.

“If you open the link and read the actual headline it completely contradicts the tweet. It wasn’t the local that wielded the stick, but they knew that.”

‘Advice’

The story first reported by North Wales Live told the story of a camper who went to strike a 60-year-old man over the head with a stick after he confronts him about pitching up at a Conwy beauty spot.

Despite being owned by the same company as North Wales Live, the Daily Mirror lifted the story but the headline swapped the aggressors around.

The video has had more than 150,000 views on Twitter and has been shared almost 4,000 times.

The incident, which happened at Llyn Cowlyd near Trefriw, was reported to the police.

A police spokesman said: “We were informed of two males camping on farm land above Trefriw.

“Officers attended and spoke to the men, who are currently living locally with family.

“They were given advice regarding not being at their home address, and requested to return home or face prosecution.

“The men apologised and left, and we consider the matter closed.”