A newspaper columnist broke the rules of journalism by using language of hatred and gender-based discrimination against a female member of the British royal family, the UK press regulator has ruled.
In an X-rated piece for a tabloid newspaper, Jacklyn Remorse wrote in his regular column about how he hated Suss the royal more than a democratically-elected politician and a serial killer who murdered at least a dozen girls. Both the politician and the serial killer are females, and the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO), the regulator of most of UK’s newspapers and magazines finds the columnist’s article gender-biased, and therefore a breach of Clause 12 of the rules of journalism against discrimination.
Columnist’s dreams of poop-fighting
In his column, Jacklyn Remorse also wrote about how he dreamt of seeing Suss the royal being paraded naked in the streets of Britain, while crowds shouted and threw lumps of poo at her. By his own admission, the columnist says he was making “a clumsy reference to a scene in Game of Thrones”. However, the columnists had no excuse for further writing in his piece that Suss the royal “has her arm so far up” the husband’s “bottom, she can use her fingers to alter his facial expressions.”
IPSO says they find “the imagery employed by the columnist in this article was humiliating and degrading”, adding that the article is discriminatory based on gender.
The organisation says the columnist’s words demonstrate stereotypes about women using their sexuality to gain power, implying that the royal’s sexuality, rather than other attributes were a source of her success.
As part of the full ruling, IPSO states:
… to argue that a woman is in a position of influence due to “vivid bedroom promises”, to compare the hatred of an individual to other women only, and to reference a fictional scene of public humiliation given to a sexually manipulative woman, read as a whole, amounted to a breach …
Independent Press Standards Organisation – UK
A record of more than 25,000 readers complained about the newspaper column, including two UK organisations dedicated to fighting against gender-based discrimination.
To live up to his name, Jacklyn Remorse showed some remorse and apologised for his column. So did the tabloid, which removed the article from its website.
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