Thomas Suárez complained to the Independent Press Standards Organisation (Ipso) that the JC breached Clause 1 (Accuracy) of the Editors’ Code of Practice in an article headlined, “Board halt Israel hate author talk”, published online on 8 May 2017, and an article headlined “Quakers row as venue is rented out to anti-Zionist”, published in print on 20 April 2018.
The complaint was upheld, and the JC has been required to publish this ruling as a remedy to the breach of the Code.
The 2017 article stated that a talk by the complainant, due to take place at a Quaker-owned Friends Meeting House, had been cancelled. The article reported that the complainant had previously said that Zionist leaders “encouraged antisemitism in Germany to force Jews to move to Palestine”.
The article reported that the British Board of Deputies were among the Jewish organisations that raised objections to the event, and that the president of the Board of Deputies had said, “We are glad that, having considered the matter in line with Quaker values, the decision was taken to cancel the booking”.
The 2018 article reported that the complainant was “allowed to speak at a Quaker-founded cultural centre despite a similar institution having previously banned him”.
It repeated the 2017 article’s claim regarding the complainant’s characterisation of the actions of Zionist leaders, and reported that “In May 2017 the Quaker-owned Cambridge Friends Meeting House cancelled an appearance by [the complainant] deciding it was not ‘in line with Quaker values’”.
The complainant said that it was inaccurate to report that the Friends Meeting House had cancelled his talk because it decided the address was “not in line with Quaker values”, or that it had “banned” him. The complainant also denied saying that Zionist leaders “encouraged anti-Semitism in Germany”.
The publication said that it had not breached the Code. It said that it had relied on comments made by the president of the Board of Deputies, who had discussed why the event had been cancelled, and on contemporary reports of the complainant’s Soas talk which had said that the complainant had stated that Zionist leaders had encouraged antisemitism in order to force Jews to move to Palestine. Nonetheless, five months after receipt of the complaint, the publication offered to publish corrections on these points.
Ipso found that the publication had not taken care over the 2018 article’s claim that the Friends Meeting House had “banned” the complainant because it decided his talk was “not in line with Quaker values”.
The claim regarding “Quaker values” was wrongly attributed to the Friends Meeting House when in fact it had been made by the president of the Board of Deputies, and there was no suggestion that the complainant had been “banned” from the Meeting House.
Ipso noted the material provided by the publication in support of the articles’ assertion that the complainant had said that Zionist leaders had “encouraged antisemitism in Germany to force Jews to move to Palestine”.
However, it had not provided a basis for claiming that the complainant had referred to Germany, or that he had adopted this claim as his own; there had been a failure to take care over the accuracy of the article on this point, in breach of Clause 1(i).
This failure to take care gave rise to a significantly misleading impression of the complainant’s expressed views, on an extremely sensitive subject.
Both inaccuracies were raised in the complainant’s initial complaint, and the material on which the complaints were based was readily available to the publication.
The publication had offered corrections which addressed the inaccuracies but these had been offered five months after the complaint was received. This was not sufficiently prompt, and there was a breach of Clause 1 (ii).