British Tabloid Forced To Publish U.K. Regulator’s Ruling That Jeremy Clarkson’s Column About Meghan Markle Was Sexist

etcanada.com:

British tabloid The Sun has been ordered to publicly acknowledge that an opinion piece about Meghan Markle written by “The Grand Tour” star Jeremy Clarkson was determined to be sexist.

In the December 2022 column, Clarkson declared he hated the Duchess of Sussex “on a cellular level,” and wrote that he was “dreaming of the day when she is made to parade naked through the streets of every town in Britain while the crowds chant, ‘Shame!’ and throw lumps of excrement at her.” After an investigation, the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO) determined that Clarkson’s opinion piece had breached anti-discrimination regulations.

IPSO chairman Lord Faulks said in the decision that the article was “humiliating and degrading towards the duchess,” and ordered The Sun to publish a front-page statement explaining in detail how Clarkson had breached those rules, which must also be featured on its website. READ MORE: Jeremy Clarkson Column About Meghan Markle Sparks Tide Of Criticism In the statement, The Sun shares IPSO’s conclusion that Clarkson’s column was sexist in tone, determining that Clarkson made a “pejorative and prejudicial” reference to her sex. “The Code protects the right to shock and challenge, but not to discriminate against individuals,” the statement reads. “IPSO therefore set aside the question of whether the article was offensive.

IPSO therefore found that the column included a number of references which, taken together, amounted to a pejorative and prejudicial reference to the Duchess of Sussex’s sex in breach of the Editors’ Code,” the statement noted. “This is the most significant sanction that we would impose for an individual complaint,” IPSO CEO Charlotte Dewar told Variety. READ MORE: