The Daily Express has complained to alternative press regulator Impress about an Evolve Politics article which dubbed it an “anti-immigrant” newspaper.
Impress, which regulates left-wing political website Evolve Politics, confirmed today it has received a complaint from an editor at the Daily Express.
A spokesperson added it was making a “preliminary assessment” of an article published on 4 January which was headlined: “Daily Express accused of ‘whitening’ picture of Tory Home Secretary Sajid Javid for anti-immigrant story”.
Evolve editor-in-chief Tom D Rogers described the Daily Express as a “notoriously right-wing anti-immigrant newspaper” in the first sentence of the story.
The article reported that the Daily Express was accused of whitening a picture of Javid on its 3 January front page alongside a story about migrants crossing the English Channel.
Evolve claimed it was “a story which was gleefully reported by the notoriously anti-immigrant Daily Express”.
In a tweet, Evolve Politics said yesterday: “The editor of the Daily Express has made a formal complaint to Evolve about the fact that we called it an ‘anti-immigrant’ newspaper in an article last week.”
The tweet pictured a number of Daily Express front pages from 2016 with headlines such as “Migrant crisis will kill off EU”, “Britain faces migrant chaos” and “The Invaders: Sneaky migrants set up tents on French cliffs waiting for boats to smuggle them into Britain to join their mates”.
Speaking to Press Gazette last year Daily Express editor Gary Jones, who took the helm following Reach’s acquisition of Express Newspapers, said “there have been some changes” of editorial choices since he took over.
“Immigration is an issue and one that is important to Express readers, but I don’t want the Daily Express to be offensive to anybody – not immigrants or any kind of religion,” he said.
“I want to be as inclusive as possible and that is something I want to personally bring to the Express.”
Jones added: “I’m not going to do a front page that isn’t reflective of the kind of society that I’d want to live in.”
Picture: Evolve Politics
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