Labour makes accuracy complaint to IPSO over Jeremy Corbyn wreath-laying coverage in six national newspapers

The Labour Party is pursuing a formal complaint against several national newspapers over their coverage of leader Jeremy Corbyn’s attendance at a wreath-laying ceremony in Tunisia.

The complaint to the Independent Press Standards Organisation has been made under Clause 1 (accuracy) of the Editor’s Code of Practice – the standards to which all IPSO members are held.

The UK’s largest press regulator has confirmed the Times, Sun, Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph, Daily Express and Metro newspapers are all implicated in the party’s complaint.

There is no barrier to a political party making a complaint with the press regulator over negative press coverage, but it is rare. IPSO said it had received four other complaints relating to the same news articles.

Labour said news reports had seriously misrepresented the wreath-laying ceremony and misidentified those buried in the cemetery, according to the Guardian.

Although the ceremony took place in Tunis in 2014, a year before Corbyn was elected Labour leader, pictures of it showing Corbyn holding a wreath resurfaced after they were published in Saturday’s Daily Mail.

The images were taken from a Facebook page linked to the Palestinian Embassy in Tunisia.

The newspaper claimed the images showed Corbyn holding a wreath “just feet from the graves of terror leaders linked to the [1972] Munich massacre.”

Labour has insisted the Islington North MP was at the service to commemorate Palestinians who were killed in an Israeli airstrike in 1985 – which had received worldwide condemnation.

The story was picked up by national newspapers and broadcasters.

The complaint has been made while the Labour Party is engulfed in an ongoing row about allegations of anti-Semitism in its ranks, centering around its decision not to adopt in full the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of anti-Semitism.

Three rival Jewish newspapers in the UK ran an “unprecedented” front page collaboration last month to speak out about their fears of anti-Semitism within the Labour Party under Corbyn.

Not all staff on the titles – the Jewish Chronicle, Jewish News and Jewish Telegraph – agreed with the editorial decision, however.

The foreign editor at the Jewish News is understood to have taken personal leave from the paper after describing its coverage of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party as “repulsive” in an interview with independent left-wing website The Canary.

Picture: Reuters/Toby Melville