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22 December 2015

The Sun is forced to print a front-page apology to Jeremy Corbyn

The tabloid loses a row over its headline “Labour hypocrite: Leftie who hates the Royals WILL kiss Queen’s hand to grab £6.2m”.

By Media Mole

On 15 September, The Sun ran a front-page story screaming: “Labour hypocrite: Leftie who hates the Royals WILL kiss Queen’s hand to grab £6.2m”. It was illustrated with a picture of Jeremy Corbyn wearing a jester’s hat.

Here it is in all its glory:

Photos: Twitter/@suttonnick

The Sun has since been ordered by the press standards watchdog, IPSO, to publish a front-page apology for the false claim that the Labour leader would only join the Privy Council to secure state funding for his party.

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The IPSO Complaints Committee ruled: “It was significantly misleading to claim, as fact, that Labour’s access to Short money (either the £6.2m, or the £777,538.48) was conditional on Mr Corbyn’s joining the Privy Council; the two were not directly connected.”

So The Sun printed a perfunctory 11 words in the bottom left-hand corner of the front page of this week’s Tuesday edition, not even mentioning the paper’s name, “in a space roughly 15mm by 35mm”, as measured by the Guardian. The headline, in the most obscure language possible, reads: “Ipso complaint on Labour short money is upheld”.  The rest of the ruling appears on page two.

Here’s the front page:

You might need a close-up…

Inside, it reads:

“Ipso’s complaints committee found that it was significantly misleading to claim that Labour’s access to the £6.2m depended on whether Mr Corbyn was a member of the privy council.

“The two were not formally connected and the article did not make clear how a majority of the funding was in fact allocated. The committee upheld the complaint.”

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