Times forced to admit: we printed garbage

Last year, the Times carried a story that a young girl of Christian background had not been allowed to eat pork under her Muslim foster carers’ roof, on their front page. They also claimed that the mother of the family wore a ‘burka’ and did not let her wear a cross on a chain, and that the girl cried when she had to return to the foster home and begged not to have to go there. Yesterday, the Independent Press Standards Organisation (Ipso) upheld a complaint by Tower Hamlets borough council against the Times on the grounds that it broke clause 1 (accuracy) of its code, and a reference is made on the front page (see the red rectangle in the attached image). (See earlier entries: [1], [2], [3].)

Ipso have not mentioned the ruling either on its website or its Twitter feed; the ruling is published in full in the Times today. According to the Press Gazette, the story provoked 178 complaints to Ipso. Within a couple of days of the story being printed, a family court judgement was published which revealed that a number of the ‘facts’ in the Times’ original story were false, including that the girl was a Christian (her family were in fact non-practising Muslims), that the foster family did not speak English (they did), that the girl’s mother objected to the placement (she did not); there were so many inaccuracies and distortions. It is a good thing that Ipso, an industry-owned regulator that is as notorious as the PCC before it for being soft on newspapers that print inflammatory stories, has found this story beyond the pale.

Update: IPSO have published the ruling on their website.

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