A Mail on Sunday front page headline saying punk rap duo Bob Vylan had “led ‘death to Israelis’ chants” at Glastonbury was not misleading or inaccurate, press regulator IPSO has ruled.
Some 123 people complained to IPSO about the headline in the aftermath of Bob Vylan’s controversial Glastonbury appearance in June in which the group’s lead singer chanted “death, death to the IDF”.
Bob Vylan also led chants of “free, free Palestine” and “from the river to the sea, Palestine… will be free”.
The Mail on Sunday summarised the chanting on its front page the next day, saying: “Now arrest punk band who led ‘death to Israelis’ chants at Glastonbury.”
The complaints argued that this was inaccurate and misleading as the singer had not led a chant that stated “death to Israelis”. They claimed that because this was in single quote marks in the headline, it gave the impression that this was a direct quote.
The Middle East Eye reported that the Mail on Sunday “falsely” claimed the Glastonbury crowd chanted “death to Israelis”.
IPSO noted that single quote marks “can be used in different ways, including to present verbatim comments, and to reference a characterisation or summary of an individual’s position”. In this case, the newspaper said it had been summarising the band’s chants.
IPSO said that when used to indicate paraphrasing, single quote marks “may differ somewhat from the exact words spoken, but providing that the coverage makes clear the words spoken; and that the summary contained within the quotation marks is not misleading or a distortion of what was said, this is not in and of itself inaccurate”.
The regulator found that the coverage of what had taken place “included a clear and prominent explanation of the precise words that had been spoken”.
It added that the Mail on Sunday was “entitled to hold and express” its view on what had happened.
The newspaper noted that Bob Vylan had previously said on stage “death to every single IDF soldier out there”, meaning the Glastonbury “death to the IDF” chant could be understood as calling for the murder of individual citizens rather than the IDF as an institution.
The Mail pointed out that Israel has compulsory conscription and reserve duty, meaning incitement aimed at IDF soldiers logically extends to the wider adult population. It added that the article contained sources quoted who interpreted the chanting in a similar way.
The Mail title also said the chanting should be understood in the context of all the comments made, namely “from the river to the sea”, which is widely condemned as advocating for the destruction of the Israeli state.
IPSO found: “While recognising that these interpretations are heavily disputed, in circumstances where the full chants were included on the front page of the article, and recognising the publication’s entitlement to set out its own interpretation of the chants, the [Complaints] Committee considered that the publication had provided an adequate basis for this characterisation.
“It did not establish that the headline was inaccurate or misleading, or unsupported by the article’s text.”
Read the full IPSO ruling here.
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