The Daily Mail secretly followed and photographed a woman in Detroit, then published a story wrongly identifying her as former White Stripes drummer Meg White, according to multiple sources cited by the Guardian. The paper reportedly went ahead with the claim even after the woman told it she was not White, raising serious questions about its editorial standards and treatment of private individuals who have deliberately stayed out of the public eye.

The article, written by senior reporter Joe Hutchison and first published on 6 August, claimed to reveal White's "secret new life" and what it described as her first public images in 17 years, including more than a dozen photographs of the woman outside a restaurant. In fact, the person photographed was a friend of White's, who has lived privately in Detroit since The White Stripes split in 2011 and skipped the band's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction last year. The Mail justified its identification partly because the woman said "thank you" after being complimented on the band's music, a rationale criticised by Society of Professional Journalists ethics chair Dan Axelrod as meaningless. The Mail quietly deleted the article and photos last week without issuing a correction, and singer Karen Elson, Jack White's ex-wife, condemned the paper's conduct as "reckless and cruel" in a now-deleted social media post.