Unbelievable. The Sun’s Trevor Kavanagh has penned yet another vile article. This week, he brought Nazi propaganda back to life as he talked about ‘The Muslim Problem’.
This isn’t the first time The Sun has crossed the line when it comes to racism and Islamophobia. And yet despite thousands of complaints to Ipso - the press regulator - over the years, The Sun gets away with it time and time again.
Why? Because the Editors’ Code of Practice, that determines whether Ipso can take action is almost designed to protect hate speech.
So The Sun is free to print the toxic rants by people like Kavanagh, Kelvin Mackenzie and Katie Hopkins that have helped fuel a shocking rise in hate crimes across the country.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. If enough of us come together we can force a change to the Editors’ Code and hold The Sun and the rest of the corporate media accountable for the lies and hate they spew.
Ipso: Change the Editors’ Code of Practice to stop papers printing hate.
For decades now The Sun has been printing lies and hate with near impunity. After Hillsborough, it published unsubstantiated smears of the Liverpool fans caught up in the disaster -- smears that stuck for decades. Last year, it announced that one in five British Muslims had sympathy for Isis -- which it later had to admit was "significantly misleading".
And let’s not forget Katie Hopkins calling people fleeing war ‘cockroaches’, and Kelvin Mackenzie’s attack on Fatima Manji for wearing a hijab while presenting the news. I could go on and on. Thousands of people complained to Ipso about Katie Hopkins’s ‘cockroaches’ column, and Kelvin Mackenzie’s attack on Fatima Manji. But both times the regulator threw up its hands saying it was powerless to do anything because of the terms of the Editors’ Code.
Unless a paper prints something that is an attack against identified individuals who can bring a complaint as victims, it can say what it likes about muslims, refugees, black and asian people and LGBTQ communities.
Ipso: Change the Editors’ Code of Practice to stop papers printing hate
The Editors’ Code of Practice contains a loophole that allows papers to drip feed hate into our society. Changing it is a key recommendation from a Europe-wide human rights body that concluded the UK tabloid press publishes ‘hate speech’ headlines that ‘encourage prejudice’.
More information
Press Gazette. 7 October 2016.
The Independent. 16 August 2017.