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Kelvin MacKenzie is no stranger to controversy. His career in journalism has spanned several decades, and has been littered with scandals and deplorable personal decisions.
He has invented stories about Elton John’s sexual escapades with rent boys; falsified interviews with Falklands War veterans, a war he was widely criticised during for glorifying violence; published headlines like “The Abos: Brutal and Treacherous” about aboriginal communities in Australia and generally navigated a bigoted and unrepentant professional life with a stunning lack of grace.
Most famously, of course, during MacKenzie’s editorship of The Sun from 1981-1994, the headline ‘The Truth’, flinging false and disgraceful accusations at Liverpool football fans in the wake of the Hillsborough disaster, was splashed across the front page in a blaze of whatever the opposite of glory might be.
It came as no surprise, therefore, that the repugnant MacKenzie resurfaced amidst yet another controversy earlier this year involving Channel 4 News Anchor Fatima Manji.
In the aftermath of the appalling terrorist attack in Nice this July, Fatima Manji appeared on Channel 4’s coverage of the incident wearing a hijab. MacKenzie, in characteristic fashion, penned an article for The Sun in which he heavy-handedly questioned whether or not it was right to have the news broken by a hijab-wearing Muslim woman.
The article earnt MacKenzie a great deal of criticism, with over 2,000 complaints written and submitted to the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO), as well as a wave of support for Fatima Manji on social media.
On October 19, IPSO cleared MacKenzie’s article of any wrongdoing. Its ruling, notably made by an all-white Complaints Committee, stated that despite being “deeply offensive”, causing “widespread concern and distress to others” and containing “pejorative references to Islam”, the article did not breach Press Standards of discrimination, harassment or accuracy, citing the fundamental right to freedom of expression in its defence.
International human rights law upholds the right to freedom of expression as one of its core principles. Freedom of the press is one of the cornerstones of democracy, facilitating critiques of the State and serving as a vehicle for open debate.
The right to freedom of expression is enshrined in Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The landmark European Court of Human Rights Case Handyside v. UK established the principle that free speech includes information or ideas that shock, offend or disturb the State or any part of the population.
On the question of whether or not Kelvin MacKenzie should have the right to offend Fatima Manji, I agree wholeheartedly with the IPSO ruling. Do I agree with his comments? No. Do I find the man repulsive? Yes. But his right to freedom of expression is as valid as anyone else’s. This is unshakeable, unquestionable, however controversial it may seem.
What I fear, however, is that IPSO has missed the more glaringly obvious point in MacKenzie’s article. He writes “I think the rest of us are reasonably entitled to have concerns about what is beating in their religious hearts. Who was in the studio representing our fears?”
The construction of an ‘us vs. them’ dichotomy is stark. “The rest of us”, “Their religious hearts”, “Our fears”. MacKenzie clearly and deliberately stokes anti-Muslim sentiments here, implying that because Manji is a Muslim, she is more likely than ‘us’ to sympathise with terrorists because we cannot trust what is in her ‘religious heart’, reinforcing the idea of Muslims as ‘the other’.
Fatima Manji has since given an interview on BBC Radio 4 in which she points out that over one third of the victims of the Nice attack were Muslims. If she must be associated with anyone in the wake of terrorist attacks, why should it be the Muslim perpetrator instead of the scores of Muslim victims?
For me, the IPSO ruling failed to address the root issue with MacKenzie’s article: its incitement of racial hatred. Both the IPSO ruling and the public discourse that preceded it interpreted the core of the debate to be around wearing religious symbols on television, which is categorically not the main problem at stake here.
MacKenzie essentially questioned whether or not Fatima Manji was allowed to broadcast because of her faith. As she herself noted, her photo was published next to the words ‘Muslim Terror Attack’, and the implication that she was not suitable to present the news of a terrorist attack is clear.
It cannot be stressed enough that the incitement of hatred against Manji was very much real and not hypothetical. She has since received many threats, with one charming gentleman in a BBC Radio debate favouring the idea that she should be lynched. Channel 4 was forced to take measures to protect Manji because they feared for her safety and wellbeing.
The personal implications of MacKenzie’s hateful article have become so lost in the fog of the religious freedom vs. freedom of expression debate. I fear that the IPSO ruling, while upholding freedom of expression and in particular the freedom to offend, has inadvertently upheld racial prejudice against Muslims in the British press.
I can’t help but feel like there is no right way to act for Muslims after a terror attack. If they as a community are perceived to be silent on the issue, they are chastised for not condemning terrorism as if they bear some responsibility for it. Yet when a Muslim woman condemns terrorist attacks on behalf of a media outlet, of herself, of her community and of humanity in its broadest sense, she is told that she is acting inappropriately!
I worry that the IPSO ruling contributes to the normalisation of anti-Muslim bigotry in the mainstream media. It is so rare to read a story in which Muslims are not connected with terrorism, the cultural denigration of women or the supposed overthrow of British food establishments with evil halal restaurants.
IPSO, to quote Fatima Manji herself, has “given the green light” to journalists like the abhorrent Kelvin MacKenzie to question the validity of broadcasters based solely on their religion. I think this is a really frightening precedent to set, and demonstrates how toothless a watchdog IPSO is.
