UK Press Censor News

A press ad for the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO), published 25 October in The Times, was headlined READY TO GO: A TOUGH NEW REGULATOR FOR THE PRESS . Text stated Today sees the launch of a tough new regulator for the press - the toughest in the Western world. The new Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO) will be up and running early next year, and will deliver all the key elements Lord Justice Leveson called for in his report. It will guarantee the British public enjoy the standard of journalism they deserve. And it will ensure Britain remains not just the birthplace, but the home of free speech. This is how it works: @ . The ad listed seven subheadings: TOUGH SANCTIONS ... UPFRONT CORRECTIONS ... INVESTIGATIVE POWERS ... GENUINE INDEPENDENCE ... NO COST TO THE PUBLIC ... THE SUPPORT OF THE NEWSPAPER AND MAGAZINE INDUSTRY ... FREE SPEECH GUARANTEED , with additional information provided under each one.

Text under the subheading GENUINE INDEPENDENCE stated The Board of IPSO will have a majority of independent members and an independent chair, chosen in a transparent and open process .

Text under the subheading FREE SPEECH GUARANTEED stated Politicians are trying to force the press to sign up to a royal charter written by politicians, imposed by politicians and controlled by politicians. IPSO is entirely independent of all political parties . Issue

The Media Standards Trust (MST) and two members of the public objected to the ad. They challenged whether:

1. the claim The new Independent Press Standards organisation ... will deliver all the key elements Lord Justice Leveson called for in his report was misleading and could be substantiated, because they maintained there are a number of elements in the report which IPSO would not deliver;
2. the claim GENUINE INDEPENDENCE was misleading and could be substantiated, because MST maintained IPSO was not entirely independent of all political parties, and MST and the two members of the public maintained it was not independent of the newspaper industry;
3. the claim Politicians are trying to force the press to sign up to a royal charter was misleading, because the Royal Charter system was voluntary; and
4. the claim Politicians are trying to force the press to sign up to a royal charter ... controlled by politicians was misleading, because politicians were explicitly excluded from the recognition body that was set up by the Royal Charter.

ASA Assessment

1. Upheld

The ASA acknowledged that the complainants believed there were elements in the Leveson report which IPSO would not deliver, and that the advertisers believed that those specific elements were met.

We considered the claim in the ad, which stated that IPSO would deliver all the key elements Lord Justice Leveson called for in his report . The ad set out seven sub-headings which provided further information about the proposed IPSO model for regulating the press. However, Lord Justice Leveson had not determined specific key elements in his report.

We considered that the ad's readers, whilst familiar with the general issues relating to press regulation, would be unlikely to have detailed knowledge of the content of the Leveson report. We thought it likely they would assume from the ad, wrongly, that the sub-headings formally set out those issues which had been expressly defined as key elements in the Leveson report, and which should be implemented by a proposed press regulator. We did not consider whether the specific elements raised by the complainants were or were not met, but considered that the ad implied more certainty around which might be the key elements than was the case and therefore concluded that it was misleading on that basis.

2-4 Not upheld

Andrew Gilligan in the Telegraph reported that Tell Mama, a project purporting to measure anti-Muslim attacks, had exaggerated the scale and nature of attacks against Muslims both before and after the murder of Lee Rigby in Woolwich. Also it was noted that Tell Mama's public funding had not been renewed after government officials raised similar concerns about its methods.

Tell Mama's Twitter feed claimed that a Muslim woman had been knocked unconscious in Bolton, a claim recycled in the Guardian. The scale of the backlash is astounding, founder Fiyaz Mughaltold the BBC. There has been a massive spike in anti-Muslim prejudice. A sense of endemic fear has gripped Muslim communities. According to Mughal, the unprecedented spike proved British society's underlying Islamophobia . These claims, and Tell Mama's figures, were unquestioningly repeated across the media.

What Tell Mama and Mughal did not tell us at the time, however, was that 57% of its 212 incidents took place only online, mainly offensive postings on Twitter and Facebook. They did not say that a further 16% of the 212 reports had not been verified. They forgot to mention that not all the online abuse even originated in Britain. Contrary to the group's claim of an unending cycle of violence and a wave of attacks , only 17 of the 212 incidents, 8%, involved the physical targeting of people and there were no attacks on anyone serious enough to require medical treatment. The supposed Bolton attack never happened. There were a further 13 attacks on Islamic buildings, four of them serious.

Mughal wasn't best pleased with the Telegraph reporting. In a typically bullying campaign, he got his supporters to write round-robin emails to the paper accusing th epaper of behaviour better suited to the days of 1930s Germany, and submitted what would became a 10-month, 127-page Press Complaints Commission complaint, full of the same misrepresentation and bluster that characterised his earlier media performances.

Last week he was comprehensively defeated on all points. The PCC ruled that our reporting that Mughal exaggerated the prevalence of anti-Muslim attacks, that he had not had his funding renewed, and that DCLG officials had expressed concern about his methods, was not inaccurate.