Islamophobia rules threaten free speech

Draft guidance from the press regulator would risk stifling journalism that is vital to the public interest

Should journalists ever steer clear of a story because it might increase tensions between communities? Should they censor certain topics – or even jokes – because someone finds them “insensitive”? In a free society like ours, surely not. A journalist’s job is to write accurately, without fear or favour, on the news of the day.

Boris Johnson’s line in a Daily Telegraph column last year about burkas resembling letterboxes may have upset some. But would it be better to live in a Britain where it was officially forbidden to publish the offending sentence? How about investigations into grooming gangs? They certainly increase tensions

among some communities. Shining a light on that scandal was nevertheless in the best traditions of public interest journalism. Yet strangely, a different view is found in draft guidance from the Independent Press Standards Organisation – the regulator of this newspaper and most others in the UK – according to documents that have been leaked to Policy Exchange and are examined in a new report from the think tank, Eroding the Free Press.

IPSO’S guidance is specifically focused on reporting on “Islam and Muslims in the UK”, according to its title. Its scope goes far beyond normal journalistic practice, moving from a focus on accuracy to more elastic and subjective terms. Journalists are urged to “be aware that their content can have an impact … on how minority communities are treated”. They are told that “inaccuracies and insensitivities” can “damage communities” – even that “unbalanced coverage can work to increase tension between communities”. This, it says, can make “harassment more likely”.

What would this advice mean in practice? Who, exactly, would get to decide what was too “insensitive” or “unbalanced”? Traditionally, in Britain, that would have been the readers: no one is forced to buy this newspaper or any other. This is where it gets troubling.

The guidance, it has emerged, is being drafted by a secret committee. No one has been publicly informed who sits on it, and the outgoing chairman of IPSO, Sir Alan Moses, has declined to reveal its membership.

But one of the names on the committee, Policy Exchange reveals, is Miqdaad Versi, a campaigner against what he calls “Islamophobia” in the UK’S media. Versi – a prominent member of the Muslim Council of Britain – contacts editors directly and complains via IPSO’S official channels. IPSO’S records reveal the scale of his operation. They show that he has personally complained about articles in publications including The Sun, The Sunday Times, the Daily Express, Mail Online and The Spectator.

He is also the Executive Director of an organisation called the Centre for Media Monitoring, an offshoot of the Muslim Council of Britain, which publishes lengthy reports looking at how supposedly “anti-muslim” the British media really is. Its last report, for instance, examined one sentence uttered by Joanna Lumley during an ITV documentary about the Silk Road. The offending line, about Kyrgyzstan, was: “This is a mainly Muslim country, but its communist legacy gives it a much less strict Islamic feel.” It is described by the Centre of Media Monitoring as a “misrepresentation”, and is dissected over three pages.

This is the problem with IPSO’S draft guidance. Plainly, it is being influenced by at least one activist with a very specific agenda. Is it right that Miqdaad Versi – a religious campaigner – has been invited by IPSO to help draft this journalistic guidance? In a commercial sphere, this would be called “regulatory capture”: when a vested interest leans on a regulator to alter the rule book to their advantage. Trevor Phillips, chairman of Index on Censorship, is right to call these activists “religious Thought Police”.

A number of editors and journalists testified privately to the “chilling effect” on media freedom that has already occurred in relation to stories that touch upon Islam. There are doubtless articles that should have been published but were not, to avoid damaging and scurrilous accusations of “Islamophobia”. Plainly, IPSO’S guidance – compromised as it is – would make things even worse.