Watchdog finds newspapers falsely said Pakistan imported Covid cases to UK

LONDON: Five months after sensationally reporting that Pakistan was origin of and responsible for half of Britain’s imported Coronavirus cases, two influential newspapers have accepted that they published misleading and false headlines.

The story was first published on 26 July 2020 by The Telegraph newspaper headlines “Exclusive: Half of Britain’s imported conronavrius cases originate from Pakistan” and the republished by Daily Mail (Pakistan was the origin for HALF of Britain’s imported corn cases), The Sun (half of UK imported coronavirus cases originate from Pakistan), Breitbart (Half of imported Coronavirus cases come from Pakistan) and several other papers.

The News and Geo highlighted the inaccuracies in the articles, stereotyping of Pakistanis and asked the Public Health England (PHC) to provide proofs as Daily Telegraph said it had been provided info by PHE. The Centre for Media Monitoring (CfMM), associated with the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), complained to the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO) that Mail Online, Daily Telegraph breached Clause 1 (Accuracy) of the Editors’ Code of Practice in the articles falsely accusing Pakistan of importing Corona cases to the UK. These articles had called for “tougher quarantine checks on arrivals from 'high-risk' countries” such as Pakistan.

The CfMM complained that the newspaper headlines were misleading these “gave the false impression that half of all the UK’s imported COVID-19 cases originated in Pakistan during the period of the pandemic as a whole. This was not the case, as far more COVID-19 cases originated in other countries over this period, particularly in Europe”.

The CfMM told the watchdog that these articles should have also made clear that the specific figures came from the period 4 to 27 of June rather than June as a whole; that the 30 cases imported from Pakistan were small compared to total cases in the UK during this period; and that the majority of imported cases over the period of the pandemic as a whole came from countries other than Pakistan.

The IPSO Committee found that the headline gave the strong and misleading impression that half of allBritain’s imported coronavirus cases for the pandemic as a whole had originated in Pakistan. The publication of the headline, said the IPSO, amounted to a clear failure by the newspaper to take care not to publish misleading or distorted information, raising a breach of Clause 1(Accuracy) of the Editors Code.”

Mail Online has now clearly mentioned on its website in a subheadline and footnote that the figure of 30 cases was only from the period of 4 July to 27 July. Mail Online said: “The headline to this article has been amended since publication to make clear that the number of imported cases of COVID-19 from Pakistan into Britain related to the month of June.”

Daily Telegraph tweeted: “Our tweets 26/6 “Pakistan origin of half of Britain’s imported virus cases was misleading as it suggested that half of all the UK imported cases originated in Pakistan, in fact, the figures only related to the period 4-26/6”. The CfMM said that IPSO has found the claims to be "misleading”.