By IRNA,
London : A right-wing British newspaper has been found guilty of breaching the press code of conduct by smearing a Muslim candidate standing in the country’s general elections in May.
“There was a breach of Clause 1 (Accuracy) of the Editors’ Code which merited prompt and explicit remedial action on the part of the newspaper,” the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) ruled against the Daily Telegraph and is journalist Andrew Gilligan.
The case was brought by Respect parliamentary candidate Abjol Miah, who was seeking to replace party leader George Galloway as the outgoing MP for Bethnal Green and Bow in London, but eventually lost the seat to Labour’s Rushanara Ali in the UK’s most populous Muslim constituency.
The Telegraph claimed that Miah was a senior activist in the Islamic Forum of Europe (IFE) and by implication, readers could draw was that if elected he would be really representing not Respect but the IFE, even though he explicitly and repeatedly denied membership.
“The Commission considered that by excluding this view the newspaper may have given readers the misleading and inaccurate impression that he accepted this description of his relationship with the organisation,” the PCC ruled.
Miah welcomed the ruling, saying the Commission “entirely vindicated my contention that the Telegraph and Andrew Gilligan breached their code of conduct.”
“The Islamic Forum of Europe does very valuable community work and has nothing to be ashamed of. However I am not and never have been a member of the organisation and the claim to the contrary slurred my veracity and my integrity,” he said in statement.
“Weak though the PCC is, this is an important victory. I hope it will ensure that Muslims will not be deterred from engaging in the democratic political process for fear of the slurs that may be made against them,” his statement said, according to a copy obtained by IRNA.