Press regulator Ipso orders paper to run prominent correction after it ‘distorted’ comments made by a prominent Labour MP in a front-page story

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

The Daily Telegraph has been reprimanded by the new press regulator for a “significantly misleading” front-page story that claimed that a group of prominent Labour MPs had rounded on Jeremy Corbyn for being an antisemite.

The Independent Press Standards Organisation has upheld a complaint from Ivan Lewis, the shadow Northern Ireland secretary, about a 15 August story headlined “Labour grandees round on ‘antisemite’ Corbyn’”.

The story claimed Lewis had attacked Corbyn’s “antisemitic rhetoric”, saying the party must have “zero tolerance” for such views.



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It later cited an article the MP had written for Labour List stating “Some of his stated political views are a cause for serious concern. At the very least he has shown very poor judgment in expressing support for and failing to speak out against people who have engaged not in legitimate criticism of Israeli governments but in antisemitic rhetoric.

“It saddens me to have to say to some on the left of British politics that anti-racism means zero tolerance of antisemitism, no ifs, and no buts. I have said the same about Islamaphobia and other forms of racism to a minority of my constituents who make unacceptable statements.”

Lewis lodged a complaint that the Daily Telegraph had misrepresented those comments, and he had not accused Corbyn of antisemitism.

The Daily Telegraph story claiming Jeremy Corbyn had been criticised for being antisemitic

The Daily Telegraph said the headline should not be seen in isolation and that the article had included Lewis’s full comments.

The newspaper added that it was also “widely accepted in modern western societies that to tolerate antisemitism was in itself a form of antisemitism”.

This defence notwithstanding, the newspaper offered to publish a statement to be carried on page 2 clarifying Lewis’s comments, an offer the Bury South MP rejected.

The Telegraph has since amended the online headline and article.



Ipso ruled that the article stated “prominently and without qualification” that Corbyn was “antisemitic”.

“The coverage was therefore significantly misleading,” said Ipso. “This misleading impression was not remedied by the quotation of the [full] remarks elsewhere in the article. The newspaper had distorted [Lewis’s] comment on this issue.”

The press regulator ordered the Daily Telegraph to publish a correction online and on page 2 in the newspaper.

In addition, Ipso said that the print edition should include a “front-page reference” to the correction because that is where the original article had appeared.

In July, Ipso reprimanded the Daily Telegraph for a significantly misleading story that claimed Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, secretly supported the election of a Conservative government.

