Jeremy Clarkson: IPSO upholds complaint

THE Fawcett Society and The WILDE Foundation complained to the Independent Press Standards Organisation that The Sun breached Clause 12 (Discrimination) in an article headlined “One day, Harold the glove puppet will tell the truth about A Woman Talking Bollocks”, published on 17 December 2022.

The complaint was upheld, and IPSO required The Sun to publish this adjudication to remedy the breach of the Code.

The article under complaint was written by one of the newspaper’s regular columnists, setting out his views on the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.

The article said that the columnist: “hate[d] her on a cellular level”; listed her, Nicola Sturgeon, and Rose West as people that he hated; “dream[t] of the day when” the Duchess would be subject to public punishment; and referred to her using “vivid bedroom promises” on her husband.

The complainants said that Clause 12 had been breached because “[t]he acts described by the author in his column and the language used is inherently misogynistic and sexualised, pointing to gender-based discrimination”, and that the article included what they believed to be “[r]eferences to methods historically used to punish and publicly shame women”.

They also said that making references to the hatred of other women linked the hatred of one woman with hatred towards other women.

The newspaper said that the article had fallen short of its high editorial standards, and that it had removed the column, after a request from the columnist to do so, and apologised.

However, it did not accept that the article breached the Editors’ Code.

It said that the concerns raised by the complainants were a matter of “taste and judgment” – rather than a case where the Editors’ Code had been breached.

The newspaper also said that the complainants had interpreted the Clause 12 too broadly, and that IPSO should not uphold a complaint by applying subjective value judgments held by particular people.

IPSO noted that The Editors’ Code doesn’t prevent criticism of public figures, even when it might seem mean-spirited or cruel.

However, an article can be offensive or mean-spirited and also breach the Code.

The Code protects the right to shock and challenge, but not to discriminate against individuals.

IPSO therefore set aside the question of whether the article was offensive.

The question was only whether it breached the Editors’ Code.IPSO found that the article included a number of references to the Duchess’ sex.

Specifically: the writer’s claim that the Duchess exercised power via her sexual hold over her husband which, in the view of the Committee, was a reference to stereotypes about women using their sexuality to gain power, and also implied that it was the Duchess’ sexuality – rather than any other attribute or accomplishment – which was the source of her power; a comparison with two other individuals – Nicola Sturgeon and Rose West – and the only clear common characteristic between the three being their sex and the writer’s “hate”; it highlighted her position as a specifically female negative role model by referring to the Duchess’s influence on “younger people, especially girls”; and the end-point of these references being a “dream” of humiliation and degradation.

IPSO considered that any of these references, individually, might not represent a breach of the Code.

However, to argue that a woman is in a position of influence due to “vivid bedroom promises”, to compare the hatred of an individual to other women only, and to reference a fictional scene of public humiliation given to a sexually manipulative woman, read as a whole, amounted to a breach of Clause 12 (i).

IPSO therefore found that the column included a number of references which, taken together, amounted to a pejorative and prejudicial reference to the Duchess of Sussex’s sex in breach of the Editors’ Code.