On 15 September, The Sun ran a front-page story screaming: “Labour hypocrite: Leftie who hates the Royals WILL kiss Queen’s hand to grab £6.2m”. It was illustrated with a picture of Jeremy Corbyn wearing a jester’s hat.
Here it is in all its glory:
Photos: Twitter/@suttonnick
The Sun has since been ordered by the press standards watchdog, IPSO, to publish a front-page apology for the false claim that the Labour leader would only join the Privy Council to secure state funding for his party.
The IPSO Complaints Committee ruled: “It was significantly misleading to claim, as fact, that Labour’s access to Short money (either the £6.2m, or the £777,538.48) was conditional on Mr Corbyn’s joining the Privy Council; the two were not directly connected.”
So The Sun printed a perfunctory 11 words in the bottom left-hand corner of the front page of this week’s Tuesday edition, not even mentioning the paper’s name, “in a space roughly 15mm by 35mm”, as measured by the Guardian. The headline, in the most obscure language possible, reads: “Ipso complaint on Labour short money is upheld”. The rest of the ruling appears on page two.
Here’s the front page:
You might need a close-up…
Inside, it reads:
“Ipso’s complaints committee found that it was significantly misleading to claim that Labour’s access to the £6.2m depended on whether Mr Corbyn was a member of the privy council.
“The two were not formally connected and the article did not make clear how a majority of the funding was in fact allocated. The committee upheld the complaint.”
Content from our partners
Related
