The Independent Press Standards Organisation’s ruling against the Daily Telegraph over its front page article about Jeremy Corbyn was justified.
But I think Ipso’s board needs to reconsider, and discuss further, one of the issues raised by the newspaper in its defence, namely that “headlines should be considered in the context of full articles.”
It appears, since the regulator did not contest the claim, that it accepts this to be the case. Why?
Headlines are hugely important because, in many instances, they are all that many readers will read and retain. They must therefore be entirely accurate. Moreover, they should not rely on what amounts to ‘weasel quotation marks’ to reflect an untruth.
Look again at the Telegraph headline: “Labour grandees round on ‘anti-Semite’ Corbyn”. To the average reader it suggests that Corbyn is an anti-Semite. The single quote marks make no difference.
I suppose it could have been adjudged as being slightly fairer if it had said: “Labour grandees accuse of Corbyn of being an anti-Semite”. Except, of course, for the salient fact that “Labour grandees” said no such thing.
One of these alleged grandees, Ivan Lewis, the shadow Northern Ireland secretary, rightly complained to Ipso that he had not made such an accusation.
He felt that a general quotation plucked from an article elsewhere did not amount to an accusation of anti-Semitism by Corbyn and that he had been misrepresented.
Ipso, presented with the facts, agreed. The article was “significantly misleading”. The Telegraph had been guilty of distorting Lewis’s comment, which amounted to an inaccuracy.
To go back to the headline point, however, Ipso should beware acceptance of the argument that headlines must be viewed in the context of the article beneath them.
I recall that the Daily Mail disingenuously advanced the same argument after running its infamous headline, “The man who hated Britain” about Ralph Miliband, father of Ed.
To allow editors to get away with running inaccurate headlines over contentious reports is to give them far too much leeway.
Oh yes, and while I’m about it, and with the greatest respect to Ivan Lewis, does he even qualify to be called a grandee?
