DAILY MAIL in RACISM row IPSO third party rejection

From Zelo-Street blog

Tad sardonic there, but whether Quentin Letts' direct question (was actor cast because he's black [is it cos he's black to paraphrase Ali G, a no more preposterous voice one could argue]) is racist or not what is also noteworthy is that ...

... Once again there's no mention (yet, at least) of IPSO, this is largely a Twitter-based row.

Guardian: Daily Mail's Quentin Letts accused of 'racist attitude' in theatre review.

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QUENTIN LETTS THEATRE RACISM ROW -

IPSO reject third party complaint

Daily Mail columnist accused the RSC of politically correct tokenism for casting a black actor in a Shakespearean role. This quickly led to a Twitter-based argument, and in turn to an IPSO complaint. Somewhat surprisingly (to me anyway), IPSO rejected the complaint (of breaching editors’ Code Clause 12: Discrimination) as it did not come from the actor highlighted by Letts.

My surprise comes from IPSO’s apparent resolve to do better than its predecessor the PCC with third party complaints (ie, someone other than the subject of press content complaining), which had been repeatedly and specifically highlighted by the Culture Select Committee as a key failing of the PCC. That issue was also highlighted over the Stephen Gateley/Jan Moir case (also Daily Mail, generally the most-complained about paper).

The 'Zelo-Street' blog (rather angrily) covered this in detail.

IPSO's seeming backtracking on this does not suggest it is likely to evolve into an especially effective regulator. It is one thing for it still to focus only on retrospective consideration of published contents and ignore all structural aspects of the press (such as the lack of pluralism, concentration of ownership), but to continue wilfully ignoring possible breaches of their Code if the article subject doesn't complain is not encouraging.

The negative publicity the tweets brought could be seen as therefore at least contributing to some censure of the Mail while its regulator refuses to consider whether or not it has been guilty of breaching Clause 12 Discrimination.

Here's a few samples of the tweets (NB: one contains strong language)...

From Letts' own Twitter feed