We reported some time back about the former Sun editor Kelvin MacKenzie who sparked outrage through his column in The Sun titled "Was it appropriate for [Manji] to be on camera when there had been yet another shocking slaughter by a Muslim?”, suggesting the Channel 4 newsreader Fatima Manji was not the right choice of the presenter in bulletin covered the Nice attacks in July.
As the week continued the press regulator, Independent Press Standards Organisation (Ipso) received over 1,700 complaints promoting it to investigate MacKenzie’s claims. Last week Ipso cleared MacKenzie saying that "While the columnist's opinion was undoubtedly offensive to the complainant, and to others, these were views he had been entitled to express. The article did refer to the complainant but it did so to explain what triggered the discussion about a legitimate subject of debate: whether newsreaders should be allowed to wear religious symbols."
Fatima Manji complained to Ipso saying that the article had breached clause one (accuracy), clause three (harassment) and clause 12 (discrimination). In their ruling, Ipso said Mr MacKenzie "was permitted to identify what prompted his discussion, rather than merely raising it in the abstract".
Ben de Pear, the editor of Channel 4 News, said he was "dismayed" by the ruling. "Whilst we agree that freedom of expression is a fundamental right, we do not believe that it should be used as a licence to incite or discriminate," he said.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4's Today programme a day after the ruling, Ms Manji said: "I think the fact that Kelvin MacKenzie can write a column and suggest that I am somehow sympathetic to a perpetrator of a terrorist attack, that somehow I am not like the rest of us, that I am the other, means that other people are now open to attack."
