Mail publisher Associated Newspapers has paid substantial damages over a “grotesque” libel made against a non-profit Palestinian refugee group in its serialisation of a Jeremy Corbyn biography.
The Mail on Sunday and Mail Online ran extracts from investigative biographer and ex-Panorama reporter Tom Bower’s book Dangerous Hero about the former Labour leader (pictured) in February 2019.
The book, and one of the serialised extracts, contained the claim that the UK-based Palestinian Return Centre was “known to blame the Jews for the Holocaust”.
Carter-Ruck, representing the PRC, said the “grotesque but utterly false” allegation had come from the misreporting in the media of comments made by a member of the audience at an event hosted by the PRC at the House of Lords in 2016.
The PRC publicly condemned the comments after the event.
Carter-Ruck announced today that Associated Newspapers has paid substantial damages and costs to PRC after it published a correction and apology in March.
Harper Collins and Bower have already withdrawn the contentious passage, explaining that the author had relied on a contemporaneous newspaper report of the incident that had not been amended or corrected.
The claim will not appear in the paperback or any other future editions of Bower’s book.
Picture: Reuters/Hannah McKay
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