The press regulator has received more than 300 complaints about an article by the Sun columnist Kelvin Mackenzie, in which he suggested that an award-winning journalist should not have been allowed to present a news programme featuring a report of last week’smass killings in Nice because she is a Muslim and wears the hijab.
Mackenzie, also the paper’s former editor, said in in his column on Monday: “I could hardly believe my eyes” when Fatima Manji appeared onscreen during the Channel 4 News programme on Friday.
“Was it appropriate for her to be on camera when there had been yet another shocking slaughter by a Muslim?” he wrote on Monday.
“Was it done to stick one in the eye of the ordinary viewer who looks at the hijab as a sign of the slavery of Muslim women by a male-dominated and clearly violent religion?”
The Independent Press Standards Organisation (Ipso) said most of the complaints were related to the accuracy of the article, discrimination and harassment and added that it may receive more. The Guardian understands that Channel 4 News will also be making a complaint.
In a statement released on Monday, Channel 4 News attacked Mackenzie’s “offensive, completely unacceptable” comments, which were “arguably tantamount to inciting religious and even racial hatred”.
The statement read: “It is wrong to suggest that a qualified journalist should be barred from reporting on a particular story or present on a specific day because of their faith.
“Fatima Manji is an award-winning journalist. We are proud that she is part of our team and will receive, as ever, our full support in the wake of his comments.”
The National Union of Journalists also criticised Mackenzie, as well as attacking the Sun for publishing his column. “To suggest that a journalist is incapable of reporting on a terrorist outrage because of the colour of her skin, her religion or the clothes that she wears says all you need to know about the contemptible views of Kelvin MacKenzie,” general secretary Michelle Stanistreet said.
“His feigned moral outrage is the language of racial hatred and bigotry, and sadly just the latest incoherent ramblings of a pundit who should have been put out to pasture a long time ago. Journalism in the UK needs more diversity, not less.”
In the column, Mackenzie also falsely claimed that “all the major terrorist outrages in the world currently being carried out by Muslims”.
By the early evening on Monday, the Sun published a second article, which was not in the print edition that appeared that morning, in which one of its feature writers – also a Muslim – wrote that the “fact that Fatima can present a news bulletin and also wears a headscarf shows how great Britain is”.
Anila Baig wrote that Manji was a “professional ... not someone dragged in off the street just because she’s wearing a scarf on her head”.
“Presenting a live news broadcast is not easy and not something an ‘enslaved Muslim woman’ terrorised by men would be able to do.”
The Sun tweeted a link to the story on Monday butlater deleted it. A spokesperson for the paper declined to comment.