7/4/22: IPSO has ruled that Mail Online did not report a “significant inaccuracy” in a February 2021 article describing asylum seekers entering the UK irregularly as “illegal migrants”.
The article reported on asylum seekers who had allegedly received Covid-19 vaccines ahead of more vulnerable people and who were being housed in “plush” quarantine hotels, which the Mail contrasted with comparatively Spartan accommodation for British returnees from red list countries.
Mail Online repeatedly described the asylum seekers as illegal migrants, including in the headline. A complainant disputed this, arguing that under the UN Refugee Convention contracting states agree not to impose penalties on anyone entering a country through extra-legal means, provided that they promptly present themselves to authorities as asylum seekers.
The Mail argued “that it was not mutually exclusive” to describe such entrants “as being both asylum seekers and illegal migrants”. IPSO agreed, saying that while the terms were “not interchangeable”, the migrants had entered the country illegally, and the article had besides been clear that they were asylum seekers.
On a separate matter brought up by the complainant, IPSO also accepted Mail Online’s argument that “it was not significantly inaccurate to refer to a breakfast of bread, butter and jam as an ‘English breakfast'”. Full ruling here.
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