Rupert Murdoch was due to host the UK’s chief press regulator for a private dinner at his Mayfair flat on Monday night, despite thousands of people registering formal complaints about Jeremy Clarkson’s column in the Sun.
Edward Faulks had been due to attend the soiree with Murdoch and other executives from his News UK company at the billionaire’s flat in central London, according to sources. This was despite Lord Faulks’s role as chair of the Independent Press Standards Organization (Ipso), the organization that regulates Murdoch’s newspapers.
Faulks, a former Conservative minister, oversees the press regulator that will ultimately have to rule on whether Murdoch’s tabloid broke guidelines when it published Clarkson’s criticism of Meghan, Duchess of Sussex.
After the Guardian asked whether it was appropriate for Faulks to be dining at Murdoch’s residence, an Ipso spokesperson confirmed he would no longer be attending the event.
The spokesperson said: “As part of his role as Chairman of Ipso, Lord Faulks often meets publishers and editors. Lord Faulks was due to attend a longstanding engagement this evening hosted by Rupert Murdoch and attended by News UK executives. Because of the volume of complaints about Jeremy Clarkson’s column, Lord Faulks felt his attendance would not be appropriate at this time and has explained this to the organisers.
In his Sun column, Clarkson wrote that he loathed Meghan “on a cellular level”. He said 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.”
He added: “Everyone who’s my age thinks the same way.”
After facing a backlash over the comments, Clarkson tweeted: “Oh dear. I’ve rather put my foot in it. In a column I wrote about Meghan, I made a clumsy reference to a scene in Game of Thrones and this has gone down badly with a great many people. I’m horrified to have caused so much hurt and I shall be more careful in future.”
Oh dear. I’ve rather put my foot in it. In a column I wrote about Meghan, I made a clumsy reference to a scene in Game of Thrones and this has gone down badly with a great many people. I’m horrified to have caused so much hurt and I shall be more careful in future.
— Jeremy Clarkson (@JeremyClarkson) December 19, 2022
Ipso has already received more than 6,000 complaints about the Sun on Sunday column. The number is almost half the total number of complaints the regulator received in 2021.
His comments follow the recent broadcast of Harry and Meghan’s six-part Netflix documentary, in which the couple made allegations of mistreatment by the royal family.
Ipso was founded by newspaper groups attempting to head off the threat of statutory press regulation after the Leveson inquiry. Its leading members include Murdoch’s News UK, the Daily Mail’s parent company, and Reach, the publisher of the Mirror and Express.