The Mail Online's decision to use an image of a woman apparently incapacitated on a London Underground station platform has been roundly criticised as "harsh" and "cruel" by its readers.
The photograph, captured by a passing amateur photographer and uploaded to Facebook, shows a woman squatting down revealing her bare bottom alongside a young couple and an underground worker.
The publication's website carried the image at the top of its front page under the headline, "Clean up on platform two - we have a human spillage," which the photographer claimed to have heard broadcast on the station's public address system.
The image led the website's front page on Tuesday (though without redaction)
Readers were quick to condemn the photographer and the publication for its use of the photo.
The publication has since updated its article to make a public appeal for information about those in the photograph.
Yet despite the article's headline alluding to the upcoming festive season the image was actually taken in September by retail worker Paul Coomber.
Paul Coomber stumbled upon the scene earlier this year
Coomber happened across the scene whilst waiting for a tube at Embankment following a day shooting some of the capital's iconic landmarks.
He told the Mail: "My train came soon after and I knew there and then that this was the best photo I'd taken all day; possibly all year."
He then uploaded it to his Facebook page before it was discovered by a news agency and sold to the website.
Yet, perhaps predictably, many of the publication's readers were quick to lambast the woman, arguing her behaviour was indicative of the decline in British culture.
One even described the image as "supporting" the claims of so-called Islamic State.
Another criticised the underground worker.
Though some were more annoyed at the Mail's shameless pursuit of a pun.
