The DUP's Nigel Dodds has had a press standards complaint against The Irish News rejected over a headline quoting a senior policeman saying "90 per cent of people" in an estate were linked to loyalist paramilitaries.
The North Belfast MP, widely expected to succeed Peter Robinson as his party's leader, went to regulatory body Ipso following a story which appeared on the front page on September 30.
Retired PSNI detective superintendent Roy Suitters stated during an inquest into the death of Daniel McColgan that in Newtownabbey's Rathcoole estate it was "very difficult" not to have associations with paramilitaries.
Mr Suitters led the investigation into the killing of the Catholic father-of-one, who was shot dead in January 2002 as he arrived for work at a postal depot in the loyalist area.
Referring to a possible suspect who was later ruled out, he said: "He had associations with people who were connected to organisations. But that would be 90 per cent of Rathcoole.
"There were individuals who visited the flat who were on the periphery of organisations but in Rathcoole it is very difficult not to have that."
Mr Dodds argued that The Irish News breached the `accuracy' clause in Editors' Code of Practice, claiming the paper paraphrased Mr Suitters's words in the headline in a way that was misleading.
The headline read: '90 per cent of people living in Rathcoole linked to loyalist paramilitaries'.
Ipso rejected the complaint.
It said: "We did not consider that the headline was an inaccurate paraphrasing of what Mr Suitters had actually said at Belfast Coroner's Court and, in any event, in the circumstance where Mr Suitters's comments were published in full in the text of the article, we did not consider that readers would have been misled by the headline."
