press regulator ipso has rejected the 6,000 complaints about the mail on sunday in coverage of angela rayner because none of them were from her personally or her representatives.
The regulator set out its reasons in more detail here.
mail on sunday editor david dillon refused to meet with the commons speaker to explain his paper’s coverage.
He said that journalists “should not take instructions from officials of the House of Commons, however august they may be.”
commons speaker sir lindsay hoyle said he wanted the meeting to urge journalists to be ‘a little nicer’ and to suggest that journalists should be more considerate of MPs and their families when reporting on westminster .
boris johnson’s official spokesman said he was “uncomfortable” with the idea of politicians calling on journalists to reprimand them.
Sunday’s page five email lead article on union deputy angela rayner, written by political editor glen owen, has been heavily criticized.
The story had prompted more than 6,000 complaints to press regulator ipso.
the article said: “all is fair in love, war and common duels with boris johnson, if the claims of Conservative MPs are to be believed.”
“the Conservatives have claimed that Labor MP angela rayner likes to put mr johnson ‘off his beat’ on camera by crossing and uncrossing his legs when they collide with the prime minister’s questions.”
He went on to quote an unnamed MP who said: “She knows she can’t compete with Boris’ coaching in oxford union debates, but she has other skills that he lacks. She has admitted as much when enjoying drinks with us at the terrace [commons]”.
[read more: who is david dillon? the low-key email editor on Sunday takes center stage]
Rayner told itv on Tuesday morning that he asked the Sunday Post not to run the story when the newspaper asked him for comment, saying: “This is disgusting. it is completely false. please don’t post a story like that…was with my teenage kids…trying to get my kids ready to see stuff online. they don’t want to see their mother portrayed in that way and that made me very depressed.”
The Sunday Mail has since defended its report, saying that Angela Rayner herself was the source of the claims that she crossed and uncrossed her legs to distract Johnson, in light-hearted banter with Conservative MPs.
Conservative MP Caroline Nokes, chair of the Women and Equalities Committee, wrote to the Speaker of the House of Commons to ask if Owen should have a parliamentary lobbying pass. However, the Commons’ spokesman, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, seemed to suggest that he would not revoke the pass.
On Monday afternoon, Hoyle told the Commons that he felt the article was “misogynistic and offensive” and that he was setting up a meeting with the chairman of the Press Lobby and the editor of the Sunday Post, David Dillon. He would meet Rayner separately on Monday night.
however, in the daily mail on wednesday, david dillon announced that he had refused to meet with the commons speaker because it appeared that he had already “passed judgment” on what happened to his commons statement.
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said: “The Sunday Mail deplores sexism and misogyny in all its forms. however, journalists should be free to report what parliamentarians tell them about talks taking place in the House of Commons, however distasteful some may find them.”
The paper said it also found four MPs in total who say Rayner herself was the source of the claim that she uncrossed her legs in the Commons to distract the Prime Minister. and found a podcast recording from january in which rayner referenced being compared to sharon stone in the movie basic instinct finding her “mortifying”.
[latest abcs: david dillon’s mail on sunday had a circulation of nearly 750,000 copies in march]
The press regulator, the Independent Press Standards Organization (IPSO), had received more than 5,000 complaints about the article as of 9:30 a.m. m. on Monday, April 25. Complainants have alleged breaches of Clause 1 (Accuracy), Clause 3 (Harassment) and Clause 12 (Discrimination) of the Publishers Code.
The latter establishes: “the press must avoid prejudicial or pejorative references to a person’s race, color, religion, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation or any physical or mental illness or disability”.
anyone can complain before ipso about accuracy problems.
In other clauses, an individual must be directly affected by the article. ipso also allows complaints from “representative groups…where the alleged code violation is significant and there is a public interest in doing so.”
labor MP david lammy said: “the ‘story’ in the sunday post is sexist rubbish designed to drive women out of politics. the dirty journalists and politicians who made it possible should be completely ashamed.”
angela rayner said on twitter: “women in politics face sexism and misogyny every day, and i am no different. This morning’s is the latest dose of rogue journalism courtesy of @mos_politics.”
the stop funding hate campaign group has begun targeting the advertisers featured alongside the online version of the Sunday mail article and appears to call for an outright boycott of the brand by identifying any advertiser on twitter.
However, others have said that the story exposes a truth about parliamentary life.
talktv political editor kate mccann said: “do you see all those female parliamentarians and journalists tweeting their anger at this story? it’s because almost all of us have experienced something like this in the course of our work, often repeatedly, and we’re completely sick of it.”
and shadow chancellor rachel reeves said: “it is a great sadness that I am not surprised. This kind of sexism and misogyny is the kind of rubbish that women MPs and also employees of the House of Commons have to put up with every day.
“and when you hear a minister say he hasn’t heard this kind of thing before, talk to your female colleagues, talk to the women who work in his office because a lot of them would have experienced this kind of thing.”
tech minister chris philp has said that if the Conservative MP responsible for misogynistic comments about union deputy angela rayner is identified, they will face “serious consequences”.
philp said he hoped efforts would be made to find out who spoke to owen, but suggested the chances of success were limited.
“I think if someone with views like those that were expressed, which are just outrageous and misogynistic, were identified, I would expect serious consequences,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today show.
“I hope that efforts will be made to identify who is responsible for those views. but journalists guard their sources fiercely and i doubt glen owen will offer that information.
“I think there is active and ongoing work to ensure that anyone who holds offensive views, including the misogyny we saw demonstrated over the weekend, is reported and action is taken.”
Labor MP harriet harman has called for a change in common rules to make misogynistic, homophobic and racist briefings breach the code of conduct: “I don’t buy the argument that it was a casual comment. when a parliamentarian reports to a journalist, he is doing something as part of his job. this is a deliberate way to undermine women parliamentarians,” she told BBC radio 4’s the world at one program.
A version of this story originally ran on Monday, April 25. it was subsequently updated on April 26 and 27 and May 5 to include new features.