UK politician Michael Gove’s unsupported claims about Muslim Association of Britain have raised questions about fair regulation of the press (Carl Court)
The Essential Fault Line in UK Politics — and How British Muslims Can Overcome It
The #1 Source of Britain’s Vulnerability? Its Civic Society
The UK’s newspapers are nominally regulated by the Independent Press Standards Organisation.
Note the word “nominally”. IPSO is not established by statute. It is not recognized under the Royal Charter that followed the Leveson Inquiry in 2013. Instead, IPSO answers in practice, to the industry that it is meant to hold to account.
On Thursday, IPSO vividly exposed the limits — and the damage — of that system.
The regulator rejected a complaint brought against The Times by the Muslim Association of Britain. The Association cited a column repeating a false allegation, first made by Michael Gove in the House of Commons, that MAB is affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood.
No evidence has been presented of a link. Instead, Gove’s statement was conjecture, repeated and amplified by outlets such as The Times, to give the impression of being factual. MAB complained that in this case, its response was omitted. Readers had no way of knowing that the allegation was disputed.
Fifteen months earlier, IPSO upheld an almost identical complaint against the Telegraph. It covering the same allegation, sourced to the same statement by Gove. IPSO found that omission of MAB’s denial left readers with the misleading impression that it was uncontested.
Asked to explain the inconsistency of Thursday’s ruling, IPSO said it does not operate on precedent. Then it split very fine hairs: one newspaper had said Gove “identified” MAB as a potential extremist body while the other said he “described” MAB as an affiliate of the Muslim Brotherhood, thus “mitigating” the effect.
Nothing in that distinction explains why The Times, unlike The Telegraph, had no obligation to avoid misleading its readers.
This inconsistency raises the question of whether the British press is being regulated effectively. If not, what does that mean for every community, not just British Muslims, and for the civic engagement which a fair press is supposed to protect?
A Regulator in Name Only
Independent press regulation was introduced after the phone-hacking scandal of the early 21st century. It was based on the premise that it was not enough to punish bad journalism after the fact. The Leveson Inquiry called for a system in which the public could be confident of a press held to a fair and consistent standard.
IPSO’s record falls short of that standard. According to the Press Recognition Panel, IPSO took up less than 4% of the complaints it received between 2018 and 2022 and upheld around 0.56%. It has never fined a publisher following a standards investigation.
A regulator that is funded by the industry which it polices, and that pays no price for getting an erroneous or inconsistent ruling, has little incentive to enforce standards. Instead, the incentive is to let a decision go the industry’s way as quietly as possible.
When IPSO ruled against The Telegraph, it came under immediate pressure. Gove warned of “a chilling effect”. The activists of the “Free Speech” Union declared “an attack”. The Conservative Party’s Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp said it imposed “unreasonable restrictions” on reporting about the UK Parliament.
The Damage of Inconsistency
With IPSO unable to uphold standards consistently — allowing the media to print false, contested and misleading statements without consequence — the cost is not confined to one community. Anyone may be affected by poor reporting with no guarantee of recourse.
The UK’s Muslims know this pattern. The Centre for Media Monitoring has documented for years how coverage of Muslims and Muslim organizations skews toward suspicion and stereotype rather than accurate representation. When unfounded claims are unanswered, again and again, there is no reason to trust the institutions supposedly built to protect the community.
Left unchecked, that pattern discourages civic engagement. It breeds distrust between communities and the institutions meant to serve them equally. It erodes the shared civic resilience upon which a functioning, multi-faith, multi-ethnic democracy depends.
Press regulation was never meant to muzzle the media. It was not to protect some organizations rather than others, applying standards rigorously in one case and loosely in the next. The system was to ensure the press holds itself to a high standard, owed equally to everyone about whom it writes.
IPSO’s record shows that promise has gone unmet. There is no guarantee that any other organization or individual, from any community, can expect fair and required attention.
