Unite take The Sun to press standards commission over inaccuracies

Unite union are taking The Sun newspaper to the Independent Press Standards Organisation over inaccuracies about Unite’s links to Labour. The trade union, which has over 1.4 million members, is unhappy with some of the reporting in a story about Unite-backed Labour candidates (£).

They claim The Sun made no attempt to contact Unite for comment on the story, and the claims were repeated in the paper’s editorial and were tweeted by Sun journalists. When contacted to ask for a right to reply, in order to clear up the inaccuracies and misleading facts, the union say they got no reply.

The complaint to IPSO states:

“We sought a remedy to our concerns on the morning of publication, setting out our concerns about the factual failures in the piece and questioning why we had not been approached for a comment that made serious allegations against the union; however, the paper refused to accept that we had a right to reply.

“The refusal of The Sun to either amend their inaccurate copy or supply the union with a right to reply is in clear breach of clause 1 section of the code of conduct.”

The problems arise from the story’s reporting of “supposed inappropriate behaviour of the union,” according to Unite.

Len McCluskey, Unite’s General Secretary, said:

“Such are the lengths that The Sun will go to smear Unite that it denies the union even a basic defence. In so doing, this paper once again abuses its position in public life.

“The Sun ignored the code of conduct governing our press because the rules would have impeded this latest slur on a union representing hundreds of thousands of decent working people. It did so in a single-minded effort to undermine the elected leader of the Labour party, Ed Miliband.”

The Sun is not the only Murdoch publication under fire today from the labour movement for publishing inaccurate stories. Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper earlier slammed the The Times for its front page splash this morning, which she says has “no foundation to it whatsoever” – and informed them of that before it went to print.