The Daily Mail has been admonished by press regulator IPSO over a story falsely claiming “one in 12 living in London is an illegal migrant”.
In its defence, the Mail argued it had based the article on a Telegraph front page published hours earlier that had not at that time been amended or corrected.
The Mail told IPSO that “given the prominence of the original article, it was reasonable for it to assume the central premise was accurate”.
The IPSO summary said: “Given the time of publication, it was ‘too late’ for independent request for comment – nevertheless, it said it was careful to attribute its story to the original publication. It said it had also accurately reported that the original publication had based their claim on a study, which it named, and reported the specific figures included in the study.”
The Telegraph published its original article on 23 January, online and as the print splash, with the headline: “One in 12 in London is illegal migrant.”
The Telegraph article reported on a study commissioned by Thames Water claiming that “London is home to as many as 585,000 illegal migrants”.
It said: “For the whole of London, [the Thames Water report] produced a range of 390,355 illegal migrants at its lowest to 585,533 at its highest, with a median figure of 487,944. With an estimated population of 7,044,667, that would mean up to one in 12 of the capital’s population is an illegal migrant.”
Although there does not appear to be a published IPSO ruling relating to the Telegraph story, the title has published a correction at the bottom of its online article and in its corrections and clarifications page where it clarifies that “the figure of 7,044,667 was the estimated population of the Thames Water London Water Resource Zone, excluding irregular migrants, not geographical London which is about 9 million”.
It said the figure given “ought to have been ‘up to 1 in 13’, based on the study’s upper figure for irregular migrants, which includes children born in the UK with irregular status and, it is understood, those with indefinite leave to remain. We are happy to correct the record.”
The complainant to IPSO about the Mail version of the articlcle offered a different interpretation of the statistics and said they showed the “correct position would be that between one in 15 and one in 22 could be an illegal immigrant”.
The Mail removed its online article and published print and online corrections on 31 January after receiving the complaint, agreeing that the story appeared to be inaccurate, although it did not accept a breach of the Editors’ Code of Practice as it did not agree it had failed to take due care.
IPSO said the Mail had also received another separate complaint and “in light of this, and mindful that it did not have access to the original research the other publication had utilised, it did not consider itself in a position to defend its article”.
In its decision, IPSO said the Mail was “entitled to report on coverage published by another newspaper.
“It was still required, however, to take care over the accuracy of its own article, and to correct any significantly inaccurate information it published.”
The complaints committee added that “the article replicated claims reported elsewhere, which, at the time of publication, had not yet been corrected. Nevertheless, where it appeared that, within its own editorial process, the newspaper had failed to recognise that the figures being reported in its own article did not equate to one in 12 in London being an illegal immigrant, the Committee considered that this constituted a failure to take due care.”
IPSO said it was a “significant” inaccuracy because it related to an “important matter of both social and political concern” and ruled it was a breach of the Editors’ Code.
Read the full IPSO ruling here.
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