Ipso’s ‘sexism’ ruling on Clarkson column “tramples” freedom of the press

This piece was written in my capacity as the Free Speech Union’s Communications Officer, and first appeared in the organisation’s Weekly News Round-up. The Free Speech Union exists to protect those who’ve been cancelled, harassed, sacked or penalised for exercising their legal right to free speech whether in the workplace or the public square. Please take a look at the great work the organisation does - our Twitter account is here.

Press regulator Ipso recently upheld complaints brought by feminist campaign groups The Fawcett Society and the WILDE Foundation, that a joke Jeremy Clarkson made about Meghan Markle in his Sun newspaper column last year was ‘sexist’.

At first glance, that might seem fairly unexceptional – after all, the Sun newspaper has long since expunged the offending article from its website, while Clarkson himself has apologised multiple times over his Game of Thrones-style fantasy, in which the Duchess, whom he professes to hate “on a cellular level”, is described “parad[ing] naked through the streets of every town in Britain” as crowds “throw lumps of excrement at her”.

And yet, through this judgement a bridge has been crossed, a vitally important centuries old defence of press freedom trampled, says Spectator editor Fraser Nelson.

In a free press, he continues, no outside organisation is supposed to establish the boundaries of morality and decency. The law stipulates what is illegal, and press regulators insist upon factual accuracy. But opinions? They haven’t been regulated in this country for 300 years.

That’s why up until now a joke by Jeremy Clarkson would have been a matter between the newspaper and its readers. Put simply, if you didn’t like it, you needn’t bother buying it again. In this way, the repercussions of bad taste were left to the market. True, the digital age has whipped-up a certain informal pressure, where screengrabs allow maladjusted twitchfork mobs to vent their spittle-flecked rage and demand regulators punish and censure whichever heretic currently stands as the receptacle for their Freudian projections. 

But Ipso’s Editors’ Code was designed to withstand that type of activist-led neuroticism: first, it didn’t regulate opinions; and second, you couldn’t complain to it on someone else’s behalf about opinions. “Our regulations do not allow us to take forward complaints about issues other than accuracy from third parties,” the Code stated. That made perfect sense: no code could ever sensibly claim to act as a neutral arbiter on matters of opinion or taste.

In other words, if previously you had been sitting at home, idly channeling the spirit of Mary Whitehouse, and suddenly realised that you found one of Jeremy Clarkson’s jokes offensive, sexist, misogynistic, appalling, or whatever else, the message would have been clear: don’t waste your time complaining to Ipso. Yes, the regulator would investigate complaints received from ‘injured parties’, thus protecting individuals; but no, it wouldn’t do the bidding of third-party activists purporting to speak on behalf of others.

So far so liberal, you might say – and it’s true that up until this point in the narrative, even as notorious a stickler for the proprieties as John Stuart Mill would find little to cavil at in Ipso’s approach to safeguarding a free press.

However, in deeming Clarkson sexist, Ipso has for the first time “imposed on newspaper columnists a line drawn by others (usually those who hate the newspaper)”, Fraser Nelson says.

Writing in Spiked, Mick Hume concurs. The Clarkson ruling changes the rules, he says. Ipso has effectively declared that “it is now in the business of policing not only factual accuracy, but also personal opinions – of protecting not just journalistic standards, but also hurt feelings”.

So, is the regulator now in grave danger of “rebranding bad taste as bigotry”, as a strong leader in the Times suggests?

Part of the problem is that in its ruling, the organisation’s complaints committee decided that “the complainants represented groups of people who had been affected” by Clarkson’s alleged sexism. “Represented groups of people”. That’s a fairly low threshold for Ipso to have set for all subsequent investigations. Because there will of course now be plenty of them for the committee to assess – as Mick Hume points out, “any little activist group can now declare itself representative of any section of society and demand action against a news outlet it objects to”.

If the ruling is allowed to stand (and a judicial review is perhaps the only tool left to strike it down), Fraser Nelson thinks it will have “chilling new implications for every Ipso-regulated publication”.

“Chilling” is right – in every sense of that word. Faced with the prospect of Ipso imposed sanctions for publishing perfectly lawful opinions that “representative” activist groups happen not to like, the most obvious editorial response will be to pursue the course involving least risk: if in doubt, don’t commission it. A new era of intensive press self-censorship surely beckons.