Oral evidence: Hate Crime and its Violent Consequences – 24 April 2018, HC 683

Oral evidence, 24 April 2018.

Witnesses

Paul Clarkson, Managing Editor, The Sun, Lloyd Embley, Group Editor-in-Chief, Trinity Mirror, Gary Jones, Editor-in-Chief, Daily and Sunday Express, and Peter Wright, Editor Emeritus, Associated Newspapers.

Chair

I welcome the first panel to give evidence to us today. We are very grateful for your time. This is our inquiry into hate crime and, as part of it, we are undertaking a particular inquiry into Islamophobia, just as our predecessor Committee before the election did an inquiry into anti-Semitism. As you may be aware, we have taken evidence in three sessions from social media organisations on hate crime, so today we will be looking at issues in the print media as well. I will begin the sitting by putting on record an apology: unusually, we have three panels that are all male, which we do not normally do. We asked each individual organisation to choose whom to send, but, on the day that Millicent Fawcett’s statue is unveiled in Parliament Square, that is perhaps unfortunate. However, we look forward very much to the evidence that you will give us today. May I ask each of you to introduce yourselves, along with the organisation that you represent and your role within it? Also, do you think that Islamophobia is a significant problem in Britain today?

Paul Clarkson

I am Paul Clarkson, managing editor of The Sun since April 2016. Before that, I was editor of The Irish Sun. As to the question, “Do you believe that there is a problem of Islamophobia in the UK?”, is that in the press and the media?

Chair

Generally, as well as in the press and the media.

Paul Clarkson

I think there will always be a problem with all kinds of issues against minorities. It is just how pervasive that is. Certainly in the mainstream media, I don’t believe that it is an issue.

Lloyd Embley

I am Lloyd Embley. I am group editor-in-chief of Trinity Mirror. To answer your question, with the wider societal issue, there are issues that we need to talk about. I am sure that is one of the reasons why we are here today.

Gary Jones

My name is Gary Jones. I am editor-in-chief of the Daily Express and Sunday Express. I have been in situ since March, and before that I worked at the Mirror. Yes, I do think that there are issues with Islamophobia. How deep-rooted they are, I am not sure, but the media have certainly had issues in the past.

Peter Wright

I am Peter Wright. I am editor emeritus at Associated Newspapers, where I deal with legislative and regulatory matters. Yes, we live in a multicultural society, and I’m afraid there are times when things are said by one group about another group which shouldn’t be said, but if I thought Islamophobia was being practised in any way by newspaper journalists, I’d be deeply concerned.

Chair

What do you see as your responsibility on this? If you think that there is a problem in society, what do you see as being your responsibility, looking at either the cumulative impact of the headlines in your organisation’s newspapers or individual articles? Do you think that you have any responsibility in terms of dealing with the Islamophobia that you’ve identified as existing? And by the way, feel free to come in. We will put some of our questions to particular individuals or groups; some will just be for everybody to respond to. Mr Jones?

Gary Jones

Yes, definitely. I think that each and every editor has a responsibility for every single word that’s published in their newspaper. And yes, cumulatively, some of the headlines that have appeared in the past have created an Islamophobic sentiment, which I find uncomfortable. It is my responsibility to ensure that content is accurate and that newspapers don’t look at stereotypical views that may or may not be around in the general public. So, I should be held to account and be answerable.

Chair

So are you making changes at the Express?

Gary Jones

Yes. I have gone through a lot of former Express front pages and I felt very uncomfortable looking at them. Individually, they may not present specific issues. There have been accuracy issues on some of them and some of them are just downright offensive, and I wouldn’t want to be party to any newspaper that would publish such material. I have to accept, as a newspaper editor, that people have different views to my own and that the newspaper is there to represent the broader section of views, but I think there are limits to how far you should go in an honest and fair-minded society.

Lloyd Embley

Personally, though, I think there are some issues raised by the word “offence”. There are several examples of things that you may or may not talk about today that I personally wouldn’t like or find offensive. I wrote something down in my own words to try and encapsulate how I felt about this: “It’s important that I read things with which I fundamentally disagree: things which I don’t like; things that offend or repulse me. Doing so provides affirmation of my own beliefs and values.” And that is really important here. We’ve got to be careful, because freedom of speech and freedom of expression is a fundamental pillar of our democratic system, and we have to remember that. I have also written down an unlikely double act of Voltaire and Roy Greenslade. Roy Greenslade is not necessarily the greatest friend of tabloid newspapers, but Voltaire is attributed with the saying, “I wholly disapprove of what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” Greenslade said, when talking about Kelvin McKenzie’s article about Channel 4 newsreader Fatima Manji wearing her hijab, “Why Ipso was correct: freedom of expression means the freedom to offend”. While I don’t like some of this stuff, I really think it’s important that I read it.

Chair

But my question is to you as editors, given your responsibility for the cumulative impact of the stories and the headlines in your papers. Do you think you have a responsibility to look at what its cumulative impact is on people who read it?

Lloyd Embley

Unquestionably—I have a responsibility and I have a responsibility to reflect and amplify the views of my readers. My readers, as a general rule, come from a left-of-centre perspective and if I carried some of that stuff, I would lose readers; it would not be very sensible. From a Mirror perspective, yes of course I still— I will give an example. When I became editor of the Daily Mirror in 2012—I did the same when I became editor of The People in 2007—I thought it was true that we used the word “Muslim” to describe individuals or circumstances when we shouldn’t have. We should have used “Islamist” or “fanatic”. I absolutely said that, from then on, that is how it would be. That is no great thing, but it is a minor example of how I believe we have moved over the last decade, as a generation, in our attitudes towards how we cover the news.

Paul Clarkson

I’d like to make the point that, as society has changed, so our readers have changed and so The Sun’s coverage has changed. What we find very useful is engaging with some of these minority groups. We don’t only engage with Muslim groups. Because one group obviously cannot speak for an entire community, we speak to multiple Muslim groups. We also speak to transgender groups. By actually talking to these people face to face, we sometimes get a really good understanding of why they believe we are the bogeymen, and we get a great understanding of how they feel about our coverage. That has really brought us on a journey.

Chair

Do you look at whether or not your coverage overall might, for example, incite hatred, increase prejudice or promote Islamophobia? Do you take that step back and look at your coverage to see whether it is or not?

Paul Clarkson

Yes, we certainly do. We have quite a stringent pre and post-publication discussion, especially over some of the more contentious stories. We always try to balance the article 10 freedom of expression, which we cherish extremely dearly in The Sun, with the greater responsibility and the impact of what we write. Of course, that doesn’t meant that we should shy away from tackling very difficult issues without fear nor favour. Only by shining a light on very difficult issues can you actually open up a debate and move forward as a society.

Peter Wright

Our first duty is to report the news. That can be difficult sometimes. I have probably been around longer than anybody else. We have had a decade or so in which there have been terrorist incidents carried out by people who claim to be inspired by Islam and by people who would describe themselves, in some form or another, as white supremacists. Earlier in my career, we had terror incidents carried out by people on behalf of the IRA, and in Northern Ireland by members of the Protestant community. You have to report these things. You have to discuss the issues that may lie behind them, and you have to do it in a way that doesn’t encourage people to go out and seek revenge. Certainly, on our newspapers, we try very hard to do that. I personally, and certainly The Mail on Sunday when I edited it, which I did until 2012, and the Daily Mail, would lay an awful lot of the blame for the problems that we have had, which may have led to Islamophobia, on the decision to invade Iraq and the frankly disgraceful policies that were carried out after that—in particular, the extraordinary rendition of people from Iraq and the operation of Guantanamo Bay. We campaigned for the release of British prisoners from Guantanamo Bay.

Chair

Just to follow up your point, Mr Embley, I think you said that your role is to “amplify the views of my readers”. That sounds a bit like one of the things we were challenging the social media companies on. We were challenging them on their algorithms and the way in which, whatever people are looking for, what they get further back and what they get recommended to them is something that becomes more polarised and more extreme. Are you really saying that your role is to amplify or to push further out the views of your readers?

Lloyd Embley

I don’t think it is necessarily to push them further out. “Reflect” is perhaps a better word than “amplify”. Obviously, that is within the confines of the editors’ code, with which every single journalist who works for the Daily Mirror has to comply. It is part of their contract and training; every single person gets a video training module. My point, which maybe I was not making very clearly, was that from the Mirror perspective, apart from anything else I would be committing commercial suicide if I carried some of the more offensive, insulting articles that other papers perhaps have carried, but I would still defend their right to carry them.

Chair

Given that all of you have said that these are issues that you take seriously and that you reflect on, do you think it is a concern that Baroness Warsi’s research suggests that only 4% of articles that refer to Muslims are positive? Sir Alan Moses said, when we took evidence from IPSO, that, “there is a fundamental problem…which is the way people write about other groups and other religions and particularly…about Muslims.” The UN High Commission on Refugees, which is looking particularly at refugees rather than at Islamophobia, describes coverage in the UK as being “by far the most polarised”, with some parts of the media being “uniquely aggressive” in their campaigns against migrants and talks about “decades of sustained and unrestrained anti-foreigner abuse, misinformation and distortion.” In terms of your sense of your overall responsibility to take these issues seriously, do you think you are getting it right?

Peter Wright

I am afraid I simply do not recognise that. I have told you that we campaigned against the war in Iraq and against Guantanamo Bay. We go to great lengths to avoid any articles that could possible contribute to Islamophobia, but you still have to report difficult issues. There have been claims of Islamophobia surrounding the reporting of sex grooming gangs in Rotherham and elsewhere. You cannot ignore the fact that these crimes appear to have a cultural background to them. You try to report them in a way that is even handed and sensible, but if you lean over backwards too far, you get to the point where you are not telling people about what is going on in our society. The fear of being accused of Islamophobia can create its own problems. We and other newspapers, in trying to describe the activities of sex grooming gangs, have described those convicted in recent articles as Asian or of Asian background. That is correct up to a point, but we are now getting complaints from the Hindu and Sikh communities that that is tainting their communities with crimes with which they appear to have no involvement. These are not easy things to deal with. However you approach them, you will sometimes find that particular groups feel that the approach is unfair to them.

Chair

Does anyone want to add to that?

Paul Clarkson

I’d like to add a bit of context to this perception versus reality. I think The Sun would have published maybe 82,000 articles of at least 100 words since April 2015. I think there are about five or six articles put before the Committee where The Sun’s coverage could be accused of inciting hatred or being Islamophobic. The vast majority are not. The articles that we produce that are about building community ties and putting a positive light on the Muslim community do not get picked by social media commentators or critics. I can give you examples. They just get ignored and whither on the vine, just within our own readers, so you don’t actually change perceptions of The Sun’s coverage in the Muslim community.

Chair

Because you raised that, we would like to turn to some individual articles. Can I ask you about the piece that The Sun wrote on 11 December 2016, where you have a cut-out-and-keep guide, “Here’s what terrorists look like”. You have a picture of Osama Bin Laden, Jihadi John and the white widow. Do you have any anxiety about that now?

Paul Clarkson

First of all, I would say that the three people who were in that were undoubtedly terrorists. It was a small piece, with a small cut-out. It was a satirical piece: it was about a ridiculous decision about Italian OAPs who were hauled off a flight and mistakenly branded as terrorists. So the accusation is: could we not have used an Anders Breivik or somebody like that? But we were looking for the most high-profile terrorists we could think of at the time, and these were three extremely high-profile terrorists at the time.

Chair

Don’t you have any concern that that is basically saying to a huge number of people, “Cut this out and keep it; stick it to your fridge, because if you see somebody walking down the street with a hijab, oh, here’s what a terrorist looks like”?

Paul Clarkson

It’s not even about what to wear. I don’t think anyone could say that Osama bin Laden is not the world’s most famous terrorist.

Chair

Of course, but “Here’s What Terrorists”—plural—“Look Like”? Not “Here’s what these particular terrorists happen to look like”, but “Here’s What Terrorists Look Like”.

Paul Clarkson

We took the criticism in; we engaged with the people who criticised, but at the time we believed it was a perfectly legitimate, and satirical, piece to put in. You could clearly see the faces of all three terrorists, and they were very widely known to the world, so nobody could mistake them for any normal member of the Muslim community.

Chair

Actually, in the picture of Jihadi John, you can’t see his face at all, because he has coverings all over his face.

Paul Clarkson

It’s the pose with the knife that everyone knows.

Chair

Indeed. Look, this is just after National Action was banned for being a terrorist organisation, so you had at that time far-right organisations that do not dress like this being banned for being terrorists, yet you put something in that says, “Here’s What Terrorists Look Like”. I recognise what you are saying about how there are an awful lot of other articles that do different things. I am just trying to push you on this question: do you now regret this article, this piece?

Paul Clarkson

I can tell you that next time we do a piece like that, we will certainly have taken the criticism on board. We are ever evolving and we do learn from the engagement we have with groups, so we regret that it caused offence to people and we would certainly look at this in a different way in the future.

Tim Loughton

Can I come to another specific example? It particularly affects the Mail, Mr Wright. Do you agree that we have a shortage of foster carers and prospective adoptive parents in this country?

Peter Wright

Yes, I do.

Tim Loughton

Do you recall that some years ago, the Mail and other newspapers—

Peter Wright

Actually, could I amend that? We have done a lot of stories over the years about white couples who have been unable to adopt, because the adoption authorities won’t allow children to be adopted into a different cultural background from the one that they were born into.

Tim Loughton

Which is what I want to come back to. You agree we have a shortage of foster carers and adoptive parents.

Peter Wright

No, I don’t completely agree. There are people who would like to adopt or foster, but can’t.

Tim Loughton

Okay. I don’t think we are talking at cross-purposes. We need more people to come forward as fosterers and adopters who are then accepted as fosterers and adopters, because there are not enough fosterers and adopters to deal with the number of children we have in care who need foster places or adoptive placement.

Peter Wright

I’m not sure that’s correct.

Tim Loughton

Well, let’s come back to that. Do you remember that a few years ago the Mail and other newspapers ran a story about a couple in Yorkshire who were taken off the fosterers register because they were active members of UKIP?

Peter Wright

I remember it vaguely.

Tim Loughton

Nigel Farage jumped up and down, and for once he was right to do so. The newspapers condemned it as political correctness. And you clearly remember that some years before that—in fact, it was the time when I was the Children’s Minister and promoting adoption—you ran a number of stories that prospective adopters who happened to be white, middle-class couples were not being allowed to adopt, typically, black boys, of whom there is an over-prevalence in the care system.

Peter Wright

That is what I was referring to.

Tim Loughton

And you quite rightly said at the time, “This is nonsense. The key thing must surely be to find a suitable loving home for those children who can’t grow up with their own parents.” I think we’ll agree on that. In September of last year, there was a story that, to be fair, was initiated by The Times, but was then certainly taken up and embellished by the Mail under the headline “Christian girl forced into Muslim foster care”. The line you had taken previously was that there was political correctness just because they didn’t share the heritage, culture or religion of the prospective foster carers and that was crazy. But here, you took the assumption that because this was supposedly a Christian girl—a five-year-old girl, referred to as AB, in Tower Hamlets—and the couple who were fostering her were Muslim, that was not appropriate. Why that inconsistency?

Peter Wright

I’m not sure it is an inconsistency. The reason it was a story is that the prevailing view of adoption agencies and fostering authorities is that children should not be put into a family with a different cultural background and, on this occasion, on the basis of the facts that were available to us at the time the story was written, a child was being put into a different cultural background.

Tim Loughton

But you have just raised cases—you raised them before I was able to raise them with you—in which your newspaper objected when it was white middle-class parents who, through political correctness, were not allowed to foster or adopt children who happened to be black or from a different religion or cultural background. You objected to that as a bad thing. I wholly agree, and we had to change the law to make that less likely to happen. Why was this, therefore, deemed to be a bad thing and appropriate for such a headline?

Peter Wright

It was deemed to be a surprising thing.

Tim Loughton

The word “forced” suggests that that was not the best thing for the child. Do you not agree with the use of the word “forced”?

Peter Wright

That was the claim being made on behalf of the child’s mother.

Tim Loughton

The child’s mother, who was an alcohol and cocaine addict.

Peter Wright

You still have rights even if you are an alcoholic cocaine addict, I’m afraid.

Tim Loughton

Indeed, you have rights, but the primary right is the entitlement of that child to be looked after properly. Under the Children Act 1989, the welfare of that child is predominant. When it subsequently turned out that you had doctored a photograph with which you took that Times story to give the supposed foster carer a head veil to make her look as Muslim as possible—

Peter Wright

No, hang on. It was to match the facts of the story as presented in The Times.

Tim Loughton

But you did not have a photograph of the foster mother wearing a head veil. You invented it.

Peter Wright

No, we didn’t have any photograph. The photograph that was published was a stock photograph. Stock photographs are supplied by picture agencies to illustrate stories where there is not a picture.

Tim Loughton

And at what point in that article did you indicate that that was not the actual parents but a stock photograph of people who just happened to be holding the hands of a girl who happened to look about five—who happened to be the age and the sex of the child in the story?

Peter Wright

The caption said, “Picture posed by models.”

Tim Loughton

I can’t see that in the article.

Peter Wright

I don’t know which version you are looking at.

Tim Loughton

Do many people actually look for that small print suggesting that this in fact is a staged photograph? That photograph was there to create an image that a white Christian child had been “forced”, in the word that you used. To add to that, you had an article by Katie Hopkins, who—surprise, surprise—referred to it as “abuse” of this little girl. You created a story with a headline that suggests that a Christian girl being fostered by British citizens who happen to be Muslims—who actually happen to be pretty good foster carers—is not appropriate and not in that child’s interests, entirely at odds with previous stories that you had run when the roles were reversed. That’s the bottom line, isn’t it?

Peter Wright

No, I’m sorry, I simply don’t accept that.

Tim Loughton

I didn’t think you would, but why not?

Peter Wright

This is a surprising story where a local authority appears to have adopted a completely different policy from what is currently the standard policy, which is that you do not place children into a family with a different cultural background. That was the reason for doing the story. The mother of the child was opposed to this placement. That was the story. This is a news report. The word “forced” is the view—

Tim Loughton

Is inappropriate, because, as the facts later revealed in other news stories, the maternal parents of the mother whose child it was were actually non-practising Muslims. The five-year-old girl—

Peter Wright

We have run—

Tim Loughton

Let me finish. The five-year-old girl had dual nationality. She was then put into the care of the Muslim grandmother, who intended to take her back to the country of origin—to a completely different background from the one in which that child had been brought up. It turned out that the girl had a warm and appropriate relationship with those foster carers. Therefore, for all intents and purposes, they were ideal foster carers. Entirely because they happened to be Muslim and, on the face of it, she was a white Christian girl—who had never been to church and had more in common with Muslim heritage than Christian anyway—and because of a fabricated story about not allowing her to wear a cross, you deemed that she had been forced and it was not in the interests of that girl, which turned out not to be true, did it not?

Peter Wright

We did not deem that she had been forced. We reported the claims made.

Tim Loughton

You used the word “forced”.

Peter Wright

Yes. It is a news story.

Tim Loughton

That is your title.

Peter Wright

It is a news headline.

Tim Loughton

It is your news headline.

Peter Wright

I’m not sure you understand how newspapers work, with all due respect.

Tim Loughton

You said just now that, along with your colleagues, you are responsible for all the words written in your newspaper. That word was written in your newspaper. It was used in the headline of your newspaper. It has clear implications that—

Peter Wright

If I can just make it clear, I don’t actually edit the Daily Mail.

Tim Loughton

I know you don’t edit it, but you are responsible for what goes in it—or are you saying that you are not responsible?

Peter Wright

I don’t make the decisions on the headlines, but I am very happy to defend them.

Tim Loughton

Which you are presumably trying to do at the moment.

Peter Wright

Yes.

Tim Loughton

When those additional facts later came out—

Peter Wright

We reported them.

Tim Loughton

You did not make an apology.

Peter Wright

Well, the original story was correct on the basis of the facts known at the time.

Tim Loughton

But it wasn’t, was it? On the basis of the facts known at the time—before your journalists actually found out what the facts were.

Peter Wright

All news stories are written on that basis. When a news story is breaking, you often only have a partial account of what happened. You have to report accurately what information is available to you at the time. You cannot wait until the history books are written—that is not journalism.

Tim Loughton

I think the day after, when the facts become clear, is recent history. It does not really constitute history.

Peter Wright

We did a big story the next day.

Tim Loughton

You did not—

Peter Wright

The facts did not all become clear—and they are still not all clear, I have to tell you.

Tim Loughton

At no point have you run a follow-up story that makes it clear that that child was not forced into a foster relationship that was inappropriate or that that child actually had a lot of Muslim heritage—not that that needs to be a factor on the basis of what you said earlier or what I said we were trying to do in Government to change the law anyway. It is not the law that you cannot place a child with foster or adoptive parents from a different heritage. That is not the law.

Peter Wright

I don’t think anybody said it was.

Tim Loughton

You suggested—you used the word “surprised”, I think, Mr Wright—

Peter Wright

Yes. I am talking about the normal practice.

Tim Loughton

The normal practice is to find a placement for a child that is appropriate and sympathetic and offers a loving environment. It is not obligatory that they have to be absolutely matched on culture, religion or heritage. That is not a surprise, in fact. Finally, when that story was clearly misleading on the basis of the limited facts that you used, and with that clearly biased headline that used the word “forced”, and when it clearly used a photograph that was nothing to do with the story, why did you not say, “We got it a bit wrong and we would like to apologise, because Muslim foster carers can be really good foster carers, but this story gave rise to the suggestion that if you are Muslim, don’t bother to come forward to adopt a child”?

Peter Wright

I am terribly sorry but I do not accept that at all. It was an accurate account of the facts available to us at the time. The picture was clearly labelled as a picture posed by models. What does that mean except that the people in the picture are not the people being referred to in the story? It is newspaper practice. Every day of the year, you will find a newspaper using stock pictures to illustrate stories. Stock pictures are supplied with the licence that they can be used and adapted as necessary. We have had no complaint from Tower Hamlets, except about one issue concerning another picture that has been withdrawn. There are no complaints about the accuracy or the story from Tower Hamlets.

Naz Shah

My first question is to Paul Clarkson. I will show the size of the newspapers. Do you agree with the widely accepted view that the brazenly adopted headline and shameful front page were intended to stir up anti-Muslim hatred—yes or no?

Paul Clarkson

No, and I’ll explain why—

Naz Shah

Thank you. I am moving on. Sorry, Mr Clarkson, I only wanted a yes or no. How can you possibly justify singling out and targeting a specific group of people—in this case, Muslims—knowing full well, first, that that headline was completely inaccurate and, secondly, the polling was actually reflective of the non-Muslim British population? That to me is beyond sensationalism; that is intent. You choose to present an outright lie as a fact because it supports your editorial narrative, which undeniably stirs up hatred against Muslims. Not only do you report on the poll—I would have preferred it if you had decided not to, because it is not news—but you jump at the chance of a horrendous headline. That front page generated an unprecedented 3,000-plus complaints to IPSO. That brings me to my next question. I have here the ruling that appeared inside, a few months later, in March, so in comparison it is not of equal prominence. Do you agree—yes or no?

Paul Clarkson

No.

Naz Shah

Thank you.

Chair

Sorry, did you say that you didn’t agree that it did not have equal prominence?

Paul Clarkson

I believe there was due prominence.

Chair

You think it was due prominence but you do not, presumably, think it was equal prominence.

Paul Clarkson

No, of course. One was on the front page and one was inside.

Naz Shah

Four months after this disgraceful headline, your paper published the ruling by IPSO, out of context, on page 2, in a small column, with no apology. Do you agree with me that this page 2 column is nowhere near the front page in equal prominence?

Paul Clarkson

I believe it is due prominence. If you want to limit me to yes or no answers, I cannot give any context. That gives a skewed answer. I can tell you why I think it is due prominence, if you want.

Naz Shah

Surely, you must recognise the offence that this type of headline causes, given that it was used by right-wing groups at the time and, no doubt, is still being used to stir up anti-Muslim hatred. As a Muslim woman who represents Muslims among her constituents, I am asking you directly: will you now apologise—yes or no?

Paul Clarkson

I apologise for the errors in the piece and I can explain the context of the story, if you want, and how we got to do the story and why it ended up the way it was.

Chair

So, you do apologise for the front page story?

Paul Clarkson

I do apologise for the errors in the story. The two errors that IPSO found were that in the polling we conflated two things: one, that everyone going to fight in Syria was fighting for ISIS—they could have been going to fight for other groups—and we conflated “sympathy for” with “support for” ISIS.

Naz Shah

So, Mr Clarkson, why have you not printed an apology to the Muslim community that you have offended?

Paul Clarkson

We printed the correction and we apologised for the errors in it. Whenever we correct a piece, we go back to the context of the piece. It was a very important issue and the reason we commissioned the poll was that there were fears of people going over to fight in Syria and coming back being radicalised when they came back. What is very fair, and what we should say about this piece, is that we did not do it in isolation just for shock tactics and trying to use poll figures to incite hatred or anything like that. What we did was reach out to at least four different Muslim voices in that piece. In fact, the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, said in reaction to the poll that “it is clear Britain needs to take its head out of the sand and tackle extremism.”

Naz Shah

Mr Clarkson, the truth is that you published a ruling by IPSO. I have yet to see an apology from The Sun for that disgraceful headline, which stirred up anti-Muslim hatred. Will you now apologise for that?

Paul Clarkson

I’ll tell you right now that I apologise for any errors in the article. There were honourable intentions in the article. If we offended anyone, we are sorry we offended anyone.

Naz Shah

You are sorry for your offence.

Paul Clarkson

Yes.

Naz Shah

And you have not published that. This is the first time that I have heard an apology from The Sun.

Paul Clarkson

We did what IPSO asked us to do. There were two errors that needed to be corrected and we did so.

Naz Shah

Mr Clarkson, there is the letter of the law and the essence of the law. The essence of editorial practice tells me that you should be leading by best example. It is clear that in this case you have not printed your apology. Thank you very much, Mr Clarkson. I now come to Mr Wright in relation to the Daily Mail story we were talking about. I am not going to go into the details, Mr Wright, but this is the original picture that Mr Loughton just referred to, and this is the doctored picture—with the veil—that you published. I put it to you again, like I have with The Sun, that this editorial decision was made by yourselves, because you are the editor, to actually incite—

Peter Wright

I’m not the editor. Can I please correct you? I am not the editor.

Naz Shah

You are representing the Daily Mail. The Daily Mail took an editorial decision to doctor an image to incite anti-Muslim hatred, because it peddles your narrative.

Peter Wright

I totally deny that.

Chair

Why did you put a facial veil on?

Peter Wright

This was a follow-up to a story in The Times, and the facts in that story said that she wore a full veil. In the stock picture that we had, which was taken of a Muslim woman in the middle east, the woman wasn’t wearing a full veil. It was simply that the veil was altered to match the facts of the story.

Naz Shah

Do you accept, Mr Wright, that you as newspapers have an ability to shape public opinion and the public consciousness through headlines, and indeed, at times, to influence changes in the law?

Peter Wright

Yes.

Naz Shah

So can we do a compare and contrast? The verdict and sentencing of the terrorist murderer of my colleague, Jo Cox MP, made it on to every major national newspaper’s front page in Britain on 24 November 2016—except yours. In the Daily Mail, it was on page 30. Alek Minassian, the suspected terror attacker in Toronto who killed six people, was called a “socially awkward tech expert”. Darren Osborne—the chap who did the terrorist attack in Finsbury Park—was called a “Far-right ‘loner’”. Alexandre Bissonnette, who killed six people in a Quebec mosque, was initially called a “White university student”, although he was called a “mass-murderer” later. Do you know what all of those things have in common? All of them were white attackers and none of them were called a terrorist. Do you think that was right?

Peter Wright

Well, if I can—

Naz Shah

It’s a yes or no answer.

Peter Wright

No, I am not going to give a yes or no answer. You have come here to seek my views, and I would appreciate it if you would listen to them. First of all, the original Jo Cox murder was reported on the front page of the Daily Mail, exactly the same as every other newspaper. The trial had been running for some days, and it was reported inside across two pages—the same amount of space that other newspapers gave to it.

Naz Shah

But it didn’t make the front page did it, Mr Wright?

Peter Wright

Other newspapers did what is called a write-off on their front pages; they didn’t lead their front pages with it. The reason for that was that the trial happened to end on the day of the Chancellor’s autumn statement, which is a very big story in every newspaper.

Naz Shah

That also applied to the rest.

Peter Wright

The editor of the Daily Mail has the right to decide which stories are the most important on the day. His decision was that the autumn statement deserved the whole of the front page, which is what it got. There is no other agenda in that decision.

Naz Shah

Mr Wright, I put it to you that these issues at the Daily Mail and these corrections—indeed, those in response to Miqdaad Versi alone—are shameful. These are not isolated incidents. These are one of hundreds of generalisations and stereotypes, no different from when papers peddled myths about gay people, black people or people with disabilities. Now it is Muslims. Earlier, you said that you try very hard to make sure that the content is right and that you report accurately. The fact is, as you have accepted, that despite what you had before you, the Muslim foster story was in fact inaccurate.

Peter Wright

No, I haven’t accepted that.

Naz Shah

Okay. I put it to you that it was, in fact, inaccurate. To that end, I also put it to you that you failed in your trying.

Peter Wright

Sorry, what was inaccurate?

Naz Shah

The reporting of the Muslim foster parents was inaccurate.

Peter Wright

I am sorry, but I’ve just told your colleague that I don’t accept that. If it was inaccurate, someone would have complained about it.

Naz Shah

Mr Wright, I put it to you that that story had inaccuracies. Your paper doctored an image that perpetuated an anti-Muslim narrative. It was incorrect. It wasn’t correct in its entirety, so therefore your trying failed. For that failure, will you now apologise?

Peter Wright

No, because I don’t accept what you are saying. You are not listening to my replies. That story was accurate on the basis of the facts that were known at the time. Since then, other facts have come out and they have been reported. The picture, as I have repeatedly told you—

Naz Shah

It is a shame you haven’t given them due prominence or equal prominence, Mr Wright. Thank you.

Peter Wright

I am sorry, due prominence for what?

Stephen Doughty

I want to come on to some other issues. It is pretty well accepted that The Sun, the Mail and the Express have a history of what I would consider to be homophobic headlines and commentary over many years, going back decades. Things have improved, but I would say that there are still some glaring examples of homophobia. I have just a couple of things to put in front of you. In 2016 and 2017, the Daily Mail was putting things like “husband” and “marry” in inverted commas when referring to Stephen Fry and Tom Daley. I was on the Committee that considered the equal marriage Bill—it is now law in this country, and heard the commentary around the PrEP decision and the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on HIV and Aids. I understand there is a very legitimate debate to be had around the clinical effectiveness of any product, but when you start talking about things like a promiscuity pill—the Daily Mail front page described the decision as demonstrating “a skewed sense of values.”

Peter Wright

Are you going to allow—

Stephen Doughty

I am just giving a couple of examples just to open this up. The same sex traffic lights in Trafalgar Square. The one particularly egregious example—I still cannot understand how this had any relevance whatsoever to do with the story—was the decisions about the judges on the Brexit court case, where quite fairly the paper described one of the judges as having founded a European law group and the other one having charged taxpayers for advice, but you described the third as “an openly gay ex-Olympic fencer”. Can you explain to me what on earth any of those things and the sexuality of those individuals involved have to do with any of those stories?

Peter Wright

Right, would you like me to start at the beginning? Which was the first one?

Stephen Doughty

Start with the last one. What does somebody’s sexuality have to do with their judgments in a major court?

Peter Wright

I’ll explain that one very easily. As you recall this was a major story. These were three judges making an incredibly important decision. What newspapers do, when people who are not well-known to the public are, for some reason, filling a very important place in the news, is they run brief profiles of them.

Stephen Doughty

Does somebody’s sexuality have anything to do with their competence as a judge to make or not make a decision, particularly if it is not related to anything to do with sexuality or equal rights?

Peter Wright

If you Google the particular judge involved, Sir Terence Etherton—he had become Master of the Rolls I think about six months previously—the first story that comes up is The Guardian report on his appointment, the headline is “Britain’s first openly gay judge becomes master of the rolls”.

Stephen Doughty

There is a very different context here, Mr Wright. I think you are being slightly misleading here. The appointment of somebody, an explanation, particularly of the first gay person to hold that role, is one thing. Relating it to the first part of your headline here, which is “The judges who blocked Brexit”, you are relating two—in the first case, the first two—facts which are materially relevant to their position on this, but in the third all you are talking about is their sexuality.

Peter Wright

If you’re going to profile the three judges, you have to profile the three judges.

Stephen Doughty

Why didn’t you say the other two were straight?

Peter Wright

Because Sir Terence Etherton happens to have made history by being the first judge—

Stephen Doughty

But that’s not what the story is about.

Peter Wright

Listen to me. The headline on that little piece was “Fencing champ”. Now, being a fencing champ does not have anything to do with the judgment he just made. This is a profile. I bet you that you have a website, which includes facts about yourself and they won’t all be political facts. There will be facts about your hobbies, your interests or your love of opera, whatever it is—I don’t know—and if we were to do a profile of you, we would go to your website.

Stephen Doughty

I’m pretty sure you would probably mention that I was gay, but you wouldn’t mention that about a straight person. Can you explain to me why you are still, in May 2017, putting the phrase “marry” in quotation marks when referring to Tom Daley or Steven Fry?

Peter Wright

I think in the case of Tom Daley, you may be mistaken. I’ve seen an article in Pink News which attributes that to the Express.

Stephen Doughty

I’ve got a copy here of the piece about Stephen Fry’s husband: “Stephen Fry, 58, is to move to LA with his ‘husband’, aspiring comedian, Elliot Spencer”. Can you explain why you did that?

Peter Wright

That’s from the Ephraim Hardcastle column, which is a mildly satirical column.

Stephen Doughty

So, someone’s marital status is for satire now, not factual reporting?

Peter Wright

Well, satire can involve almost anything. It is a very old England tradition, you know: it goes back to Jonathan Swift.

Stephen Doughty

I think blatant homophobia masquerading as satire is pretty clear to most people, Mr Wright. Can we move on to a serious concern I have about transphobia, certainly with regards to The Sunday Express and the Mail, and indeed, The Times and the Telegraph, who we’ll have in shortly? You seem to think this is all very funny, Mr Wright, but there is a serious edge to this. Stonewall said last year that nearly half of all transgender schoolchildren have attempted suicide. On what we are talking about here, hate crime, the current figure is that 41% of all transgender people have suffered hate crime just in the last year. I can tell you this factually from having spoken to a number of my own constituents who are transgender, and from hearing their horrific experiences. There appears to me to be a concerted effort by certain publications at the moment to promote some extremely unpleasant transgender hate material. I will give some examples. There’s Rod Liddle talking in The Sun in 2014 about a Labour candidate, Emily Brothers, who happened to be blind as well as transgender, saying, “Thing is though, being blind, how did she know she was the wrong sex?” This was, of course, subject to a complaint to IPSO which upheld the complaint. That’s the only one that has been upheld. We obviously have the case of Richard Littlejohn in the Daily Mail in 2013 who was accused by the coroner of character assassination of Lucy Meadows, describing, “He is not only in the wrong body, he’s in the wrong job”. Lucy Meadows was subsequently found dead. There’s the Daily Mail 2017 headline, “Church: let little boys wear tiaras”, and The Sun in November with: “Now kids, it’s Alice in Transgenderland”; “The skirt on the drag queen goes swish, swish, swish”; and “Trans classes for kids aged 2” on the front page. Very recently, in March 2018, there was “Tran and wife”. You’ll recall the horror of the couple involved. I thought it was absolutely disgusting, quite frankly. How you think you can get away with that sort of stuff in the modern age? Finally, in the Express, there was Leo McKinstry talking about transgender people tightening their “demented grip on our society”, “the growing pattern of transgender madness” and “making a mockery of biological science”. When we see the suicide and hate crime figures, do you accept any responsibility whatsoever for generating the type of atmosphere that transgender people face in this country? I will start with you Mr Clarkson.

Paul Clarkson

I would like to come in because I have some very strong opinions on what you have accused us of. I would actually say that The Sun is one of the most prominent media organisations to shed a light on transgender issues. We have an excellent relationship with a number of transgender lobby groups that we have been engaging with over a number of years. On the headline that you just spoke of, “Tran and wife”—I think the language you used was “absolutely appalling”—I completely refute that. I would like to give you some context. That couple came to The Sun to tell their story because they trusted us to tell their story. Every word, headline and image was passed by transgender groups pre-publication. I have a number of texts that said that it was a wonderful piece, gushing with praise.

Stephen Doughty

But the headline you chose, the couple themselves described it as sensationalised and misleading.

Paul Clarkson

Do you think it’s the headline, “Tran and wife” that they have an issue with?

Stephen Doughty

It’s the headline, and then it’s, “Jake who used to be a woman weds Hannah who was a man”. We all know where you are going with this, whatever was inside.

Paul Clarkson

I know what the issue is here. We talked earlier about one group not being able to talk for a whole community. Gender is a broad spectrum: you have everything from those who accuse certain feminists of being TERFs, all the way through to people who want to go live in stealth or be gender fluid, and so on. With this story, we got their full blessing beforehand. There was no issue with “Tran and wife” because you have three words to tell a story. It is not a front page story just to say, “man marries woman”. The issue that some people within the community had was with the strapline along the top that explained that there was man that used to be women, marrying a woman who used to be a man.

Stephen Doughty

Why is it a front-page story anyway? It’s two people getting married.

Paul Clarkson

Why shouldn’t we shed light on this modern, transgender—

Stephen Doughty

Why is a story of two people who love each other getting married on the front page of your newspaper?

Paul Clarkson

Because it shows how society has changed in a positive way. If anybody actually read the piece—everyone in the transgender lobby groups who we have spoken to were gushing with praise. They thought it was an incredible—

Stephen Doughty

Do you think that Rod Liddle’s report about Emily Brothers—not least because it was upheld as a complaint by IPSO—was acceptable?

Paul Clarkson

When I go back to 2014—it was before my time, but I won’t shirk responsibility for—that was a pretty stupid and ill-judged joke.

Stephen Doughty

“Stupid and ill-judged”? Okay. Gary, can you just tell us about Leo McKinstry and his comments in the Express?

Gary Jones

Can you tell me when—?

Stephen Doughty

I haven’t got the exact date, but it was in an opinion piece in the Express. We can provide it afterwards.

Gary Jones

It is a comment piece. I suppose he is entitled to give his opinion within that. I would argue that newspapers have come a long way in the last 10, 20, 30 years on transgender. When I had my time at the Mirror, we ran the story with Kellie Maloney, which was a really important story, because it was a very prominent person who wanted her story to be told. We sat in the office—there were six of us—and we spent two hours going through every single word of that story, until we were entirely happy that the wording of that story was satisfactory and that the communities involved would not object to any single word. I think that massive ground has been gained here, in communities where newspapers and editors, like myself, are very much aware that you need to get every single word right.

Stephen Doughty

On that, can I just ask one last question, which is just to all three of you? You mentioned that you have liaised with lots of transgender rights groups. Can you tell me which ones?

Paul Clarkson

Yes. All About Trans. And there are some transgender individuals who we have actually written about in the past. It was actually ones where we went wrong in the past, but we built a relationship with them.

Stephen Doughty

Would you welcome—this is to all of Gary, Peter and Lloyd as well, I assume—training from organisations like Stonewall and other trans-friendly organisations, in terms of terminology and understanding some of the issues? I ask that because, quite frankly, I don’t think that the papers understand the effects and the deep hurt that is caused to members of the trans community by a number of the headlines and a number of the ways that stories are covered. Would you welcome that sort of opportunity for discussion with your reporters and editorial staff? Peter?

Peter Wright

I don’t have any problem with that at all. We have talked to them in the past and taken advice. I do think that, going back 20 years, newspapers—I don’t believe the Daily Mail ever did, because it’s not their sort of language—but stories were done that talked about “gender benders”. I don’t think you see anything like that now. Society does change.

Stephen Doughty

We’ve got the Daily Mail from 2017, just before Christmas: “Church: Let Little Boys Wear Tiaras”, and then a whole set of pejorative copy below, which I think takes you into that “gender bender” territory.

Peter Wright

I haven’t researched that one, but I do recall the story and I think you’ll find it is an accurate report of what was said. However, I do accept that transgender issues were hidden 20 years ago. People didn’t know about them; they didn’t understand them. And I think we’ve all been on a journey of discovery and will continue to do so. Actually, as far as I can see—I’m not an expert—it is quite a complex issue.

Stephen Doughty

It is indeed a complex issue, but therefore I welcome the fact that you would all welcome training and support from organisations who actually understand it—

Lloyd Embley

Yes, we definitely would.

Paul Clarkson

I’ve had three emails with them this week; we have already set up more training.

John Woodcock

Can I talk in more general terms about the amplification of acts of terror? This is clearly a complex area, but if you understand the definition of “terror” is to be able to project a greater level of fear among a community, whether that is the Westminster attack by an Islamist, or Finsbury Park, where there was a far-right extremist, the act of a single man with a van or a knife being able to command global media attention potentially makes those acts of hatred—acts of terror—more attractive to carry out? Do you accept that that is the case, and do you accept that you, as leading members of the media, have a judgment call to make about the prominence you choose to give to such attacks?

Lloyd Embley

They all sound like examples of terror to me, and I think that is how we covered them.

John Woodcock

Indeed they are, but I am asking more generally. It is not an accusatory question at all. It is clearly a question that the political world has to reflect on, when we call for national minutes of silence and world leaders show their solidarity. Do you think it is problematic? Have you ever made judgments in editorial meetings about whether it is problematic to give terror acts the level of attention that they currently get in the media? Is there potentially a role to play for media organisations to set in context, for example, the harm that can be done by someone with a van compared with other ways in which there is a level of risk to human beings in this country?

Paul Clarkson

I think we have a responsibility to report on difficult things, but there are measures that every editor will be careful of. For instance, every wannabe terrorist can go on to Amazon and order the ingredients they need for a bomb that will maim and injure hundreds of people, but we never give a DIY kit of how to do that. We have to show responsibility on that. But you must uncover and explain the victims’ stories and the motives behind terror attacks and why they happen.

Gary Jones

The whole idea of terror is to cause fear—that is the intent. All newspaper editors are aware of not wanting to push that, and of just covering the story as fully as they can without going further. Certainly, if there is a terror attack, we will get—or have in the past—members of the community to write a piece saying, “This is not in the name of Islam”, or something to that effect. The story itself will play out and, yes, the terminology and the language are things that every editor is aware of. You do not want your readers to be terrorised, which is obviously the whole reason why the attack was carried out in the first place.

Lloyd Embley

It also depends a bit on the particular medium you are talking about. If you are online, events can move and change so quickly. We have had examples recently where someone has hit several people in a car and they turned out to be a drunk driver. That probably would not—does not—fall under terror, for sure, but for perhaps 45 minutes, it looked like it did.

Sarah Jones

We have talked a lot about specific cases. I want to talk about the cumulative impact over a long period of time. The Chair has already mentioned that, at the moment, only 4% of content about Muslims is positive, and that for every one moderate Muslim mentioned, there were 21 examples of extremist Muslims. That is from Baroness Warsi’s research. Another example is when you look at the coverage of Brexit and the referendum. A King’s College London report said that of the 99 front-page leads about immigration, 88 presented a negative picture and no front-page lead about migration presented a positive picture. Only 5% of the national population are Muslim—it is quite a small number—and yet a YouGov poll found that more than half of Britons surveyed regard Muslims as a threat to the UK. A lot of people who do not know any Muslims regard them as a threat. Do you think the negative coverage, whatever the rights and wrongs of each individual story, has a cumulative impact on people’s opinions of Muslims?

Peter Wright

Can I come in on that? I have done a bit of research of my own. I went through the Daily Mail’s front pages so far this year and I found only five front-page stories that in any way impinged on Muslims. One of them was a story about Theresa May promoting women and ethnic minorities to senior Government positions. One of those women, I know, happens to be a Muslim. That was not mentioned in the article. One was about an heroic Afghan interpreter who has been denied entry to the UK and we quoted a general, saying how disgraceful that was. I presume the interpreter is a Muslim; the story did not say so.

Sarah Jones

We don’t have time to go through them all. My point is not the specifics but the cumulative impact.

Peter Wright

The point I am trying to make is that there is no anti-Muslim agenda; it doesn’t exist. I can only repeat that my newspaper when I edited it and the Daily Mail campaigned against the war in Iraq.

Sarah Jones

The war in Iraq does not mean that you are not publishing racist content or content that is going to incite racial hatred. That has got nothing to do with anything. That is something completely different.

Peter Wright

If we were trying to incite racial hatred it would be appearing on our front page. If we want to run a campaign, like we have against the damage plastic does to the environment, or in favour of better treatment for prostate cancer, it will appear on our front page frequently. Stories inciting hatred against Muslims do not appear on our front page.

Sarah Jones

So the content of your papers has had no impact on people’s views? That is what you are saying?

Peter Wright

I do not know where people have got their views from.

Sarah Jones

Often from newspapers, I would suggest.

Peter Wright

Not necessarily. We are told these days that they get them all from social media.

Chair

Hate crime in Britain is on the rise, particularly Islamophobia and hate crime against Muslims, and you think it is all okay—business as usual—and there is no need to do anything?

Peter Wright

No. I am afraid I think social media is frankly dreadful.

Chair

So it is all social media’s fault and not the print media’s?

Peter Wright

All I can tell you is that I have worked in newsrooms for 40 years and I have never heard an editor say, “Right. Let’s run this story because it attacks Muslims.”

Sarah Jones

It might be unconscious bias because you are all, with respect, middle-aged white men—

Peter Wright

I am a quite elderly white man, actually. I got my pension letter yesterday.

Sarah Jones

I say that as a middle-aged white woman—I am not making a point about that. What I am making a point about is the proportion of journalists who are Muslim, for example, which is 0.5%, compared with 5% of the population. Sometimes, there is unconscious bias that builds up over time. Just as Lloyd made the point, rightly I imagine, that if I carried some of this stuff, I would lose readers. It might be that editorially you make that decision that if you do not cover these stories you would lose readers, because your readership has a right-wing view.

Peter Wright

We have plenty of Muslim readers. I am sure that there are plenty of Muslims with right-wing views.

Sarah Jones

Do you think you should have more Muslim journalists?

Peter Wright

I think we would like more journalists from all minority groups.

Sarah Jones

How are you going about it?

Peter Wright

We run a big training scheme and we have Stephen Lawrence scholarships, which are specifically for journalists from minority groups.

Lloyd Embley

We would all like that, I think. It is a problem for the industry to attract them. My children are a quarter Pakistani, by the way, so I have a certain element of knowledge here. It is difficult to attract particularly Muslim, Hindu and Sikh—

Sarah Jones

That’s not surprising when you look at content.

Lloyd Embley

I think it is more a cultural thing. Their parents don’t see journalism as the kind of career that they want their kids to go into, is the truth. I can’t speak for the others but I can certainly speak for the Mirror. We would like more, for sure.

Paul Clarkson

What we have found is that we have had to give alternative ways for people to get into journalism. With the apprentice scheme, we consciously target different kinds of people, instead of the people who are going through the usual university and education system.

Douglas Ross

First of all I have a question for Paul Clarkson and Peter Wright. In the 2015-16 IPSO annual report, it said 14,455 complaints were received. What proportion or percentage of complaints do you think were from your two newspapers?

Paul Clarkson

I would guess, as the two biggest newspapers in the UK, and as newspapers with a certain political slant, that there was a huge proportion.

Douglas Ross

Is it 5%, 10%, 20%, 50%?

Paul Clarkson

There is an important distinction about how many complaints—

Douglas Ross

We will come on to that, but my question is about the percentage. What do you think the percentage of complaints received by IPSO was for your two publications?

Peter Wright

I’m well aware that our newspapers get the most complaints.

Douglas Ross

You’re well aware, so what percentage is it?

Peter Wright

I could not tell you off the top of my head.

Douglas Ross

So you’re not well aware? Okay, it is 50%. Half the complaints in 2015-16 were for your two papers. Why?

Peter Wright

Because they are the biggest papers.

Douglas Ross

So that’s it?

Paul Clarkson

There are two elements.

Douglas Ross

So are you disagreeing with Peter Wright?

Paul Clarkson

I agree with that, but there are two elements. One is that we are the biggest newspaper. There are also the groups that orchestrate complaints, so it is abused by interest groups. You might find, for instance, that thousands of complaints can be orchestrated on social media, all about the same story.

Douglas Ross

Ah, so Mr Wright’s argument is that because you are the biggest newspapers and you have the biggest readership, therefore you will have a high percentage, but your argument, Mr Clarkson, is—

Paul Clarkson

No, I said there are two elements.

Douglas Ross

So the two elements are totally different? It is because you are the biggest newspapers—

Peter Wright

No—

Douglas Ross

Sorry, hold on. If I can ask the question, then you can answer the question. You were getting rather upset at others interrupting you; I get upset when you interrupt me. You cannot possibly say that you have 50% of all the complaints because you have the most readers and are the biggest newspapers, but then say that actually it is not your readers, it is all these outside interest groups that are complaining against you?

Paul Clarkson

No, I said it is two elements that combine. They are in isolation, but they are cumulative in effect. First, we are the biggest newspaper, so we are the most prominent and have the most readers. A lot of the complaints will not come from the readers; they will be either politically motivated, or from other kinds of interest groups.

Douglas Ross

Surely by that argument, though, it would not matter if you were the biggest newspaper or the smallest newspaper? If the content is enraging some of these interest groups, you would still receive a high number of complaints.

Paul Clarkson

It is not the number of complaints; it is how many are upheld and actually have merit. That is where it is a completely different picture. When you actually think of the percentage of upheld complaints compared with the amount of complaints that come in, it is infinitesimally small. The Mail and The Sun are probably some of the best at IPSO.

Peter Wright

Can I just explain those figures to you slightly? What IPSO counts is the number of complaints filed. Thanks to social media, which in many ways in an excellent thing, if someone tweets, “Look at this front page—complain to IPSO,” you will get 3,000 to 5,000 complaints overnight. That number of complaints does not represent the number of stories that have been complained about; it represents the number of complaints that may be simply a matter of someone pressing a button. In our annual report, which will be published by IPSO shortly, the four or five Associated titles received complaints, and I am including not just IPSO complaints but complaints that did not come through the IPSO process, that were of enough substance to need investigation on 348 stories last year. Thirty of those involved discrimination, and none of the discrimination complaints were upheld by IPSO—nor, before you leap in, were they, by any manner of means, all about Islamophobia.

Douglas Ross

I have some concerns that you just assume that, because the final figure is small in terms of the number of complaints that are upheld, you should not worry about the thousands of people, readers or interested groups in this country who are offended by something that you have put in. As editors, and as people involved in the newspaper industry—an industry that, as I think you have already alluded to, is losing readership—should you not be worried that thousands of people go to IPSO and complain? That is a question for you all. Or are you only worried about the ones that you get punished for?

Peter Wright

No, you are worried about the ones where you think you have got something wrong, but a very large proportion of those complaints—any newspaper managing editor will tell you this—are people who simply disagree with what you publish. They characterise it as a complaint, but the truth is it can be virtually anything. It can be: “Why did you carry another picture of Meghan Markle on your front page?” That is a complaint.

Douglas Ross

It’s still 50% between your two newspapers. I want to come to all four of you to ask whether you think you give enough prominence to corrections and apologies, following on from what Naz Shah was saying earlier on.

Paul Clarkson

We certainly do. We have an established position on page 2 of The Sun for adjudications, corrections and clarifications.

Douglas Ross

Your opinion is that having that in the same place every time means readers know where to go to find all the mistakes you have made?

Paul Clarkson

It is highlighted in blue, so everyone knows now where to go to. Sometimes that would be more prominent than the original article. The original article often is on page 32 or 26 or sometimes it could be for a front page article, but that is the place—it is well established where to go. It is also on the home page and freely searchable usually if it is an online article. We also need to be wary of the fact that these clarifications are not carried in an echo chamber. Any number of social media commentators or media organisations are perfectly happy to report that The Sun has had an upheld complaint at IPSO.

Lloyd Embley

I agree. Page 2 is the same place for us. It is where we ask people and tell them how to complain. It is almost without doubt further forward in the paper than any complaints that the original story took place, certainly in the case of The Mirror, for sure.

Douglas Ross

Do you mean you have never had a complaint upheld on the front page?

Lloyd Embley

I would have to go back.

Douglas Ross

But you did say it was further forward than any other, which would suggest there is evidence.

Lloyd Embley

Many other.

Douglas Ross

Okay.

Lloyd Embley

I would also say that a number of newspapers have carried front page corrections. From our point of view, that was a big thing.

Douglas Ross

I will come on to that in the next part.

Gary Jones

Yes, it is important for newspapers to make corrections quickly if they get it wrong. I checked on stories the Express has done in the past and where it has got it wrong, it is amended with a correction on page 2 and also online you can see a correction at the end of the story or the story is removed from online.

Peter Wright

Yes, we have a big correction spot on page 2 as well.

Douglas Ross

Finally, what else do you do when you have to make a correction? How does your process go back to the journalist to say: “How did you get this wrong? How did the story get so far down the line that we printed it and we are forced into this embarrassing apology because we are trying to sell a newspaper that gives true facts every time?” You all have a dedicated space, because you have so many corrections to make. You all have a dedicated space where people can see corrections, which means they are there fairly regularly. What do you do to go back to the journalist to say: “This is unacceptable, this isn’t good enough, we have had another complaint in”?

Paul Clarkson

An awful lot of my time is dealing with complaints at The Sun. Basically, as I mentioned before, there is a big pre-publication and post-publication editorial process. We have a readers’ ombudsman who we work with. We have a legal department. Every journalist on The Sun gets IPSO training once a year, both online and in physical sessions every two years. The thing is that when you are printing that vast amount of articles—we print hundreds of thousands of articles a year online and in print—you are going to have mistakes. We are not robots.

Douglas Ross

Why are there going to be mistakes? People read the newspaper assuming what they are reading is true. That is why they buy a newspaper—for facts, for comment, but also because it is true. I know we need to move on, but what do you do when a mistake is made—not the training you do every year, but when a journalist and a sub-editor and an editor have all agreed a story that then gets complained about and you have to put out a contraction and a correction? What do you do to that journalist, sub-editor and editor? Do you go back every time and ask them why they got something so wrong that you have had to apologise and give a correction?

Paul Clarkson

We have an investigation. If we believe that there was a mistake that wasn’t an honest mistake or an understandable mistake, there can be discipline, but it is usually an honest mistake, and with the sheer volume of stuff we publish, there are going to be mistakes.

Douglas Ross

I am sure individuals involved that have a correction about your story that may be on page 2 but is of less prominence in their view don’t take much comfort from the fact that it is an honest mistake. These mistakes can have massive repercussions for individuals and groups, as we have been discussing here. So is that an agreement?

Peter Wright

Our titles publish about 350,000 stories a year between them. The Daily Mail’s correction box carries about 60 or 70 corrections. It is in the nature of journalism that you are reporting events as they happen and they are often contested. Sometimes, I am afraid, people lie to you. It is inevitable, I am sorry. So there are some corrections that are the result of journalist error, and there are others that are not. There are things that it transpires, when fuller information is available, turn out not to be correct. We still correct them. Whenever it is a result of journalist error, there is a three-stage process. The journalists are interviewed and made to explain themselves and try to justify whatever statement it is that they have made that turned out not to be accurate. If we then establish that it has been an error and that it is a problem with the way journalists in general are working, all the journalists involved are told that they have got to mend their practices and do it differently. On top of that, I hold seminars every year or 18 months for all our journalists. I do about 35 or 40 seminars—it takes several months to get through—

Chair

I am going to have cut you short. We are very conscious of the time. We have a last issue that we need to cover. I apologise to the panellists due to follow that we have let this run on. This panel reflects some of the biggest circulation papers and it is important to make sure we have enough time to cover that, but I do want to apologise. I want to briefly touch on social media. Kirstene Hair.

Kirstene Hair

There is no doubt that social media companies are going to have to take more responsibility for the content on their platforms. Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged that recently in front of the Senate. Do you think that the current regulations in place for broadcast and print media are sufficient for these new platforms or do you think that we need an entirely different set of rules for social media platforms?

Chair

I will ask you for quite short answers, so we can move on.

Lloyd Embley

As a company, we sign up to IPSO. There is definitely a grey area when it comes to social media and whether that is covered by IPSO. We would expect our social media journalists to behave within the editors’ code and the IPSO code. Clearly, you cannot apply that to some of the social media companies who do not fall under IPSO. So there is definitely a problem, but I think the problem lies with the lawmakers of the land to decide how they want to regulate social media.

Kirstene Hair

You suggest there is a bit of a grey area.

Lloyd Embley

There is unquestionably a grey area. Someone who has been mentioned quite a lot in here is Katie Hopkins. She is on Twitter right now. In the last 16 hours, she has tweeted some fairly unpleasant stuff; there is a video of her walking around the streets of Toronto saying, “I can’t see a single person who looks like they’ve come from Canada; they all come from Africa.” She has 900,000 followers. I don’t like that, but that is not a problem we can solve—any of us.

Paul Clarkson

We must give people a power to offend and the freedom to offend as long as there are other restraints about accuracy and so on.

Lloyd Embley

Far be it for me to defend The Sun or the Mail, but Katie Hopkins has worked for both of them and she doesn’t have that job any more, so they did something about it.

Peter Wright

That was because of her activities on Twitter.

Gary Jones

I think everybody is very aware that social media putting information out immediately is going to have issues. Certainly, the Express online is treated very much the same way as print. It goes through a legal process and if there is a complaint, it will be at the end of the article or the article no longer exists.

Kirstene Hair

So you believe the regulations that are currently in place are sufficient?

Gary Jones

No, I don’t. I think we need to look very closely because it always moves very, very quickly and people respond. As Lloyd has just said, Katie Hopkins and that kind of material can suddenly go into the stratosphere immediately.

Lloyd Embley

The current regulations deal with our news brands online, because we are signed up to IPSO. It is everything else.

Peter Wright

If I could explain—if one of our journalists goes on to Twitter or puts something on Facebook as a Daily Mail journalist, then that is regulated by IPSO. If somebody not employed by a newspaper puts stuff on social media, they are not regulated by anybody. I think that is something that the internet and social media industry is going to have to grapple with and I am sure will come under a great deal of pressure from politicians.

Kirstene Hair

Just to clarify, you said there is a difference between a newspaper, which has an editor, and a social media company, which does not. Does that mean, for example, that Mark Zuckerberg sitting in San Francisco should be held responsible for a post uploaded by somebody sitting in the UK, which does not come under, for example, one of your newspaper titles?

Lloyd Embley

That is the problem we face right now. Are they publishers or not? With the greatest respect, I am not sure it is down to the newspaper industry to solve that particular problem. To a certain extent, we are victims of the problem—in many ways, not least our ad revenues.

Kirstene Hair

If I finally delve into this a little deeper, do you think that having stricter rules on removing hate speech would be a more effective method of regulation than making the specific social media companies responsible for all posts that appear on their platforms? As you say, a newspaper editor has their own regulations but others, as we’ve suggested, don’t.

Gary Jones

That is something that media companies like ourselves do. If there is an inappropriate comment or a race hate comment attached to a story, that will be removed as soon as humanly possible. The argument is that perhaps Facebook and other sites should adopt the same policy.

Kirstene Hair

And take on more responsibility.

Gary Jones

Yes.

Chair

I will just ask you one very quick question because we are going to come on to this in the other panels, but we just want to quickly hear your views on the record. It is currently illegal to incite racial hatred. Would you accept having the words of the law in your editors’ code?

Paul Clarkson

I believe that the law is the best form for dealing with incitement to hatred. I think there is certainly an argument—and I know IMPRESS’s code and so on have a clause there—but I think we should leave it to the professionals: the CPS and the police.

Chair

You really would rather have the police and the prosecutors deciding what should happen in the newsroom than you yourselves through an editors’ panel or through IPSO?

Paul Clarkson

I believe that there is the IPSO code and there’s the law. We actually operate within both. I would be uncomfortable with IPSO deciding on what is hate speech and what is incitement to hatred. As talented and esteemed as they are, they do not know better than the CPS and the police. Of course, the code is constantly evolving and it will be really interesting to find the Committee’s opinions.

Chair

So you would prefer to have the law step into the newsroom than have self-regulation on this?

Paul Clarkson

It already does and there has been no journalist, I believe, who has ever been charged or arrested over incitement to hatred.

Lloyd Embley

I am certainly minded to look at it, but clearly we need to have agreement. The difficulty is the bar or burden of proof. The law exists. There have been very few prosecutions as far as I am aware. In fact, I think that was part of the evidence given to you, wasn’t it? Was it six in the last three years or something? Was that right? Maybe, again, push that back a little bit and say that if that isn’t doing the job it is supposed to do, then perhaps there is a problem with the law, but it would be incorrect if we weren’t, as a group of editors, to consider that. My current position is that I would be minded to look at something that was aligned to the law, but that is my personal view.

Gary Jones

The legal bar is very high. Whether it should be that high is a debate we should also have as a society. Where it’s at as an industry, it is much lower. There is a much better balance that could be found and I am not sure we have got it at the moment.

Peter Wright

I am going to echo the views of others. The editors’ code isn’t set in stone; it changes, it is regularly reviewed and it is certainly something we could look at. I have two caveats. One is that if the editors’ code simply replicated the law, it would be very difficult for IPSO to investigate a case because the editor would be very reluctant to give evidence to IPSO if there were a pending court case. The other is that if the proposal is that there should be a clause of the code that set a lower bar, you would then be demanding of journalists who depend on freedom of expression in order to do their job. You would be allowing them fewer rights to freedom of expression than members of the public, which would be a very difficult circumstance.

Chair

You don’t give them fewer rights to freedom of expression if you can decide which of the things they say and which opinions they hold you decide to publish and give a bigger platform to. That does not give them fewer rights to free opinion or expression when they go to the pub.