The Sun is very unlikely to be censured by the Independent Press Standards Organisation (Ipso) over its front page that reported one in five British Muslims being in sympathy with the jihadis.
Although Ipso has received 2,822 complaints about the story - its largest postbag involving a single article since it came into existence a year ago - the regulator will be hard pushed to find the paper guilty of breaching the accuracy clause in the editors’ code of practice.
Why? Because, as I argued in my London Evening Standard column, it all comes down to a matter of how the Sun interpreted the findings of an opinion poll.
Although the pollster, Survation, has distanced itself from the way in which the newspaper reported its findings, it has not disputed the fact that the paper used its statistics.
It has also conceded that it alone was responsible for the multiple choice question asked of the public:
“Which of the following statements is closest to your view? I have a lot of sympathy with young Muslims who leave the UK to join fighters in Syria; I have some sympathy with young Muslims who leave the UK to join fighters in Syria; I have no sympathy with young Muslims who leave the UK to join fighters in Syria.”
Rightly, other pollsters and critics have pointed out that the question has two flaws. What is meant by the word “sympathy”? And “fighters” could relate to Isis or non-Isis combatants. Moreover, there was questions raised about Survation’s methodology, which it has contested.
Aside from that, Survation implied that its own interpretation of its poll data was more perfect than that of the Sun’s. But who is to say that one interpretation of data is any more valid than another? Does the Sun’s interpretation amount to an inaccuracy?
It is possible that a case could be made about the Sun’s choice of headline. Its sister News UK publication, the Times, carried a correction in which it stated that its own headline, “One in five British Muslims has sympathy for Isis”, was misleading.
The Times’s headline, which has since been amended, was similar to the Sun’s front page: “1 in 5 Brit Muslims’ sympathy for jihadis”. So I guess it’s possible that Ipso could find against the Sun over that.
But I doubt that. I think many of the complainants were upset by the Sun’s presentation of the poll, viewing it as insensitive and likely to inflame anti-Muslim elements.
That is certainly a reasonable point of view (though Ipso is not investigating that issue). The Sun would surely counter that, despite the matter being contentious, it was unwilling to indulge in self-censorship. The poll data told its own story.
I also noted that the Sun carried articles by two Muslims, one by its occasional contributor Anila Baig and the other by Labour MP, and London mayoral candidate, Sadiq Khan. Both of them were aware of the data in advance of writing.
This will probably be taken into account by Ipso, although - as I say - the lead complaint it selected from MEND (Muslim Engagement & Development) accused the Sun of breaching the editors’ code of practice and relates specifically to accuracy. So the point is this:
Was the Sun guilty of a misinterpretation of the Survation poll or was it simply “an interpretation”? All eyes on Ipso...
