By Thomas Kinsella

On the 27^th of February IPSO published three judgements that exemplify the failings of the national press’ complaints-handler.

Shooting in Nottingham

On the 17^th of October 2024, the Mirror published an article with the headline:

“Nottingham shooting: Three shot after gunman opens fire at 10 people in horror attack”

An obviously shocking headline which would understandably be concerning to readers. However, if you chose to read on past the subheading you would have discovered that this wasn’t quite the deadly incident that you might have expected, and that the Mirror were being a little… dramatic.

The article went on to explain that the shooting was, in fact, carried out using a BB gun – a “firearm” commonly used by hobbyists and which is, generally, not considered dangerous (although appropriate eyewear is recommended).  No serious injuries were sustained. The Mirror defended their decision by providing definitions of “firearms” and “horror” and arguing that their headline was technically factual.

“Clickbait” has become rife in UK journalism, and in an attempt to capture people’s attention to sell adverts editors are becoming more and more deceptive with their headlines. Many readers will have only seen the headline and been left with the impression that a significantly more tragic event took place. Readers should be able to trust that headlines present a representative version of the events detailed within the body of the article. This is even supported by IPSO’s Editors’ Code which states that the press must not publish “headlines not supported by the text”. However, if newspapers can avoid sanctions by explaining away clearly misleading headlines with tenuous justifications, then we can likely expect the use of “clickbait” headlines to continue. In this particular case, IPSO ruled that there was no breach of the Editors’ Code.

Dangerous Prisoner in Luxury Cell

On the 2^nd of January 2025, the Express published an article with the headline:

“Teen who plotted terror attack 'has stabbed 10 prison officers' - and sliced one's ear off”

The article detailed the “luxury” treatment of a prisoner who had access to an en-suite bathroom, television and video game consoles despite having attacked multiple prison guards. The majority of the testimony came from one “unnamed source” who detailed the prisoner’s activity whilst incarcerated.

The IPSO complaint was brought by the prisoner’s mother who claimed that the entire article was substantively untrue. She stated that her son had been held in isolation for around a year and that he had no access to the luxuries, such as a “games console or DVD player” that the article suggested. On receipt of the complaint, IPSO states that the Express offered to remove the article as a “gesture of good will.”. This satisfied the complainant and therefore IPSO brought the complaints process to an end, declining to comment on whether the Editors’ Code had been breached.

We will therefore likely never know what the truth behind this story is. Did the Express publish an entire article that was completely false, did they fail to fact-check any of the statements from their “unnamed source” or was the complaint itself baseless? These are the sorts of questions that you would expect a competent press regulator would want to investigate, however, due to the design of the complaint procedure newspapers can avoid scrutiny from IPSO by offering to remove the offending article and hoping this will satisfy the complainant (who has no substantial alternative remedies available).

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The Impossible Tax Rise

On the 29^th December 2024, the Express (once again) published an article with the headline:

“Millions of middle-class families face £8,000 tax raid under Labour next year”

The tax rise they were referring to was the well-publicised introduction of VAT to private school fees by the Labour Government. However, the claim that “millions” of families would be affected was absurd. As the complainant outlined in their submission to IPSO, the number of families with at least one child attending private school in the UK was estimated to be around 450,000. The claim that “millions” of families would be impacted by the tax rise was therefore completely indefensible. Moreover, according to the Independent School Council, the average cost of a year of private education is around £18,000, which would result in an increase in tax of £3600; under half the amount claimed by The Express.

The Express accepted these statistics and amended the article to replace “millions” with “thousands”. IPSO accepted that this correction was sufficient.

We can’t know how many people will have read the article before the correction was made (5 days after publication), but we can be pretty certain that many of them will not have seen the correction that followed. To a competent regulator this would be a worrying state of affairs, and yet at no point was the Express asked to justify how it had ever deemed its completely impossible headline to be acceptable to publish. Instead, IPSO concluded that “no further action was required”.

The absence of further clarity in the headline adds to the potential harm done: by not setting out which “tax” was being referred to, many readers – especially on the basis of the inaccurate “millions” figure – would assume that the Government were introducing some other form of new taxation, affecting a huge part of the population.

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Conclusion

The three examples highlight three different ways that IPSO is failing the public in regulating the UK press. Each of these reports was published on a single day and represents a tiny fraction of the overall number of cases brought to IPSO’s attention over the course of a year. Blatant “clickbait”, a potentially fabricated article and a clearly false headline, and in each case their consideration of the complaints fell short of what we would expect from a competent regulator.