Bunglawala v The Jewish Chronicle: IPSO Upholds My Complaint Against The Jewish Chronicle

The Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO) has just published a formal ruling on its website upholding my complaint against the Jewish Chronicle and declaring it to have been in breach of Clause 1 (Accuracy) of its Editors’ Code of Practice. You can read the official IPSO ruling here. IPSO has ruled that the Jewish Chronicle must amend its story both online and in print to explain why it was inaccurate and also publish a note saying that IPSO have upheld the complaint against them and have required them to publish the correction. 

This represents yet another very serious failure on the part of the Jewish Chronicle which is already under scrutiny for multiple breaches of the IPSO Editors’ Code of Practice in recent years for repeatedly publishing false and inaccurate information – very often about pro-Palestinian activists and organisations.

On 23 Nov 2022, the Jewish Chronicle published a story online (and then on 25 Nov 2022 in its print edition also) by its columnist Zoe Strimpel – who also writes for the Sunday Telegraph – headlined “Why Don’t Footballers Take The Knee For Jews?” The article was published during the FIFA World Cup in Qatar and was a polemic directed against Qatar and the Islamic Republic of Iran – two governments that are, entirely coincidentally of course, both supporters of Palestinian rights – and included the following assertion:

“…the Islamic Republic has repeatedly vowed to wipe Israel and Jews off the face of the Earth.”

Now, it is certainly true that a number of senior Iranian leaders have vowed to bring down the Israeli settler-state – and, frankly, good for them. Israel’s criminal dispossession and ongoing decades-long murderous persecution of the occupied Palestinian people – with US and UK complicity – is a terrible injustice that must be addressed.

What did not appear to me to be at all true, however, was that Iran had “repeatedly vowed to wipe…Jews off the face of the Earth.” Zoe Strimpel and the Jewish Chronicle were using their platform to allege that Iran was openly espousing the cold-blooded murder of all Jews in every country of the world, including the UK. That seemed to me to be an incredibly inflammatory claim to make and so obviously false. The Jewish Chronicle’s absurd assertion, which was presented as a statement of fact, constituted, to my mind, a very serious breach of Clause One (Accuracy) of the IPSO Editors’ Code of Practice which says:

i) The Press must take care not to publish inaccurate, misleading or distorted information…

So, on that same day (23 Nov 2022), I emailed IPSO with a complaint and said:

I am aware of statements from Iran’s political leaders that look forward to the dismantling of Israel – which is widely viewed as implementing apartheid policies against the occupied Palestinian people by many Muslims and human rights organisations around the world.

However, I am not aware of statements from Iranian political leaders that have “repeatedly vowed to wipe…Jews off the face of the earth.”

Jews live in many countries around the world including the UK. Strimpel in her comment piece therefore appears to be suggesting that Iran’s leaders have vowed to kill all Jews around the world including in the UK.

I can find no evidence for this very incendiary and provocative claim.

Therefore, I would like IPSO to judge whether Strimpel and the Jewish Chronicle have breached Clause 1 on Accuracy in the IPSO Editors’ Code of Practice.

IPSO forwarded my complaint to the Jewish Chronicle and their Reader’s Editor, Richard Burton. There was then some to and fro correspondence between us where Burton tried to fob me off with a very minor online amendment presumably in order to avoid me going down the route of asking for a formal IPSO ruling to be issued. When I rejected his offer and insisted that IPSO adjudicate he accused me of having a “politically-charged agenda”. This was a strange accusation coming from the representative of a publication that has had to publicly apologise time and again after having been successfully sued in the courts for printing false and inaccurate stories about pro-Palestinian activists and has been found multiple times in the past to have breached the IPSO Editors’ Code of Practice on Accuracy. And yet it was I that was being accused by the JC’s Reader’s Editor of having a “politically-charged agenda”!

Indeed, so poor is the quality and accuracy of the Jewish Chronicle’s “journalism” that the JC’s editorial staff had to undergo a “specially-tailored” training programme by IPSO staff back in 2020/2021.

The Jewish Chronicle’s correction was published today as per below.

As mentioned above, the Jewish Chronicle has been found to have been in breach of the IPSO Editors’ Code of Practice and has also been successfully sued in our courts an embarrassing number of times, and consequently, there have quite rightly been calls for IPSO to use the power at its disposal to launch an official standards investigation – its most serious potential action – into the Jewish Chronicle.

The penalties within IPSO’s powers under a standards investigation include a fine of up to £1m, ordering the payment of reasonable costs for the investigation, and membership termination.

Up until now, IPSO has declined to open a standards investigation into the Jewish Chronicle. Indeed – as the Press Gazette reported last year – IPSO has never opened a standards investigation into any publication since IPSO was first created back in 2014. In a statement in January 2021 IPSO argued for more time to be given to the Jewish Chronicle to see if the training that IPSO staff had recently provided had made an improvement:

IPSO has the power to launch a standards investigation, its most serious sanction, where there are exceptional concerns about the behaviour or actions of one of its regulated publishers. This could include serious and systemic breaches of the Editors’ Code; where a publisher’s annual compliance statement raises significant concerns; or in specific circumstances, because of substantial legal or Code compliance issues.

It is important that any regulatory intervention is appropriate, proportionate and in line with IPSO’s regulations. IPSO’s Board has carefully considered the concerns raised about editorial standards at the Jewish Chronicle. It has decided that it would not be proportionate to launch such an investigation at this time.

Although the Board noted issues with the Jewish Chronicle’s compliance with the Editors’ Code, the publication has engaged with extensive specialist training in the past six months and there have been changes in ownership and personnel during the relevant period.  A review will be conducted in six months to assess whether the training and other changes have been embedded in the Jewish Chronicle’s editorial practices and to consider whether any further action is required.

The above response from IPSO raised legitimate questions as to just what it would take for IPSO to actually use its powers to open a formal standards investigation into a publication.  A number of those who had won libel cases against the Jewish Chronicle or had their complaints upheld by IPSO against the Jewish Chronicle were not at all impressed by IPSO’s refusal to take stronger measures and issued a joint statement:

 

Following this latest ruling against the Jewish Chronicle for publishing yet another false and inaccurate story, it must now be time for IPSO to acknowledge that enough is enough and that a standards investigation into the JC must now be opened. There clearly appear to be very serious systemic editorial failings at the JC. A failure to open a standards investigation can only embolden the Jewish Chronicle and encourage other bad actors in the press with the notion that they can continue to publish blatantly false information while only risking a mild slap on the wrist from IPSO. A failure to open a standards investigation would also lessen public confidence and trust in both IPSO and our press at a time when it is already dangerously low.

Indeed, since I was first notified by IPSO at the beginning of April 2023 that they had decided to uphold my complaint against the Jewish Chronicle, the Jewish Chronicle has been at it again this time publishing a falsehood about early Islamic history and the battle of Khaybar. In an article published on 20 April 2023, the Jewish Chronicle said:

“The Khaybar chant refers to a massacre of Jews by a Muslim army at the seventh-century battle of Khaybar in Arabia”.

This is simply and verifiably false. There was absolutely no “massacre of Jews” at Khaybar. There was a battle there between the Muslim army led by the Prophet Muhammad and the Jews of Khaybar. The Jews were defeated and were allowed to remain in Khaybar on condition of paying an annual tribute to the Islamic state in Madinah. I have read dozens of books on early Islamic history by both Muslim and non-Muslim historians and not a single one of them claims that there was a “massacre of Jews” at Khaybar. The Jewish Chronicle has for years been confusing and conflating – either deliberately or through sheer editorial incompetence – the events at Khaybar (628 C.E.)  with the fate of the Jewish Banu Qurayza tribe the year before (627 C.E.) in Madinah (not Khaybar) who were punished for their treachery.

If you are concerned about the Jewish Chronicle’s repeated publication of falsehoods and its libel of pro-Palestinian activists and its multiple breaches of the IPSO Editors’ Code of Practice and would like to see IPSO open a standards investigation into the paper then please take a couple of minutes out of your time to politely let IPSO know by emailing them at inquiries@ipso.co.uk .

وَٱلَّذِينَ جَـٰهَدُوا۟ فِينَا لَنَهْدِيَنَّهُمْ سُبُلَنَا

“And those who strive in Our cause, We will surely guide them along Our ways…” (Qur’an 29:69)