The Independent Press Standards Organisation has upheld a complaint against the Times over its coverage of the fostering placement of a young girl in east London.
Notice of the ruling by Ipso was published on the front page of Wednesday’s print edition.
In August last year, the Times reported that a “white Christian child” had been left distressed after being placed with two Muslim households in Tower Hamlets over a period of six months.
However, the initial claims soon proved to be a one-sided account, as further details emerged, including that the girl’s grandmother – with whom she was ultimately to be placed – was a Muslim and did not speak English.
Tower Hamlets council complained about an article on the front page of the newspaper’s 30 August edition – the third front page dedicated to the story that week – in which the newspaper implied that a judge had ruled against the council by ordering that the then five-year-old girl be removed from the Muslim household and placed with her grandmother. In fact, the council had requested that the girl be placed with her grandmother.
Under the headline “Ipso upholds complaint against Times”, the paper said the press regulator had ruled that the article breached rule one of the editors’ code of practice, which concerns accuracy.
The Muslim Council for Britain (MCB) said the Times should be forced to apologise for its coverage, which it said had pushed an “inaccurate, misleading and bigoted narrative about Muslims”. It said the ruling was “too little, too late”.
The Ipso ruling, which was published in full on page two of the newspaper, called the article a “distortion” of the issue.
“Ipso’s complaints committee found that the article gave the impression that the judge had found that the placement was a ‘failure’ by the council; and that this was why she was ‘removing’ the child from her current foster carers, and placing the child with the grandmother. The committee ruled that this was a distortion,” the ruling said.
“The impression given by the article was that the judge’s decision represented a finding against the complainant’s assessment of the child’s needs in organising the foster placements. This was not what the court had decided, or an implication of what the court had decided.”
However, the press watchdog did not find that the Times’s omission in the article that the child’s grandmother also had a Muslim background amounted to a failure to take care over accuracy.
Ipso required the Times to publish its ruling on page six of the newspaper or further forward, and on the website, appearing in the top 50% of online stories for 24 hours.
The furore surrounding child AB, as she was known in court documents, was prompted by a front-page article in the Times headlined “Christian child forced into Muslim foster care” on 28 August.
According to confidential local authority reports, a social services supervisor had described the child crying, asking not to be returned to one foster carer because “they don’t speak English”.
The report included a pixellated photograph of the girl in the company of a woman, said to be her foster carer, wearing Islamic dress.
The Daily Mail picked up the story on its front page the following day under the headline: “MPs’ anger as Christian girl forced into Muslim foster care.”
The former Mail Online columnist and commentator Katie Hopkins tweeted an image of the front page, asking: “Which individual at Tower Hamlets was responsible for the abuse of this little girl?”
The Daily Mail and Mail Online did not have a photograph of the girl at the heart of the case. Instead, they used a stock picture of a Muslim family to illustrate the story in print and online. But they altered the image to cover the woman’s face with a veil.
Khatun Sapnara, a family court judge, took the rare step of publishing a court order that contained details contradicting the original reporting of the case.
The child’s maternal grandmother was revealed to be a “non-practising Muslim”.
It emerged that the grandmother did not speak English, with the order saying she required a translation of the document. The grandmother also expressed a desire to “return to her country of origin and care for the child there”.
Miqdaad Versi, who leads the MCB’s work on media reporting on Islam and Muslims, said: “While Ipso’s ruling on this shameful incidence of anti-Muslim reporting is welcome, their response thus far has been too little, too late. The note on the front page is welcome but cannot be considered even due prominence given this story was on four front pages.”
It is understood that the foster carers at the heart of the case were left distraught and upset by the reports, and Tower Hamlets council received abusive phone calls.
Will Tuckley, the chief executive of Tower Hamlets council, said: “We felt it was important to make the complaint to defend our foster carers and protect children in foster care, along with standing up for our diverse communities.
“From the start, we had significant concerns about the validity of the allegations about the foster carers. For example, one allegation was that they did not speak English, even though that is a prerequisite for any foster carers.
“An investigation into all the allegations in the Times article later found them to be unsubstantiated.”