19/5/22: IPSO has upheld an accuracy complaint by a member of the public over an express.co.uk headline originally headlined “Army sent in as border crisis explodes – desperate EU forced to beg UK for help”. The article was subheadlined: “BRITAIN will send 140 military engineers to Poland to support its efforts to deal with a crisis at the border with Belarus, as the EU desperately attempts to stem the influx of migrants entering the bloc.”
The EU had not made a request for help with the border struggles, however. Instead, the request had come from the governments of Poland and Lithuania, both of which are EU states. Upon receipt of the complaint, the Express altered the headline to say that “EU nations”, rather than the EU itself, had made the request.
IPSO determined this was insufficient, describing the claim as “inaccurate, misleading, and unsupported by the text of the article” and saying it “did not accept that direct actions undertaken by member states equated to actions undertaken by the union as a whole”. The regulator ruled that a standalone correction should appear on the Express website. Full ruling here.
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