6 August 2008

The Daily Mail responded positively to Chris Doyle, Arab Media Watch adviser and director of the Council for Arab-British Understanding, about an article published on 31 July 2008 on the newspaper's website entitled "Arab sends his Lamborghini for an oil check - 6,500 miles by air from Qatar to London."

It began with the sentence: "An Arab sent his £190,000 Lamborghini on a 6,500-mile round trip flight to London for an oil check, it was revealed today."
 
Doyle questioned the relevance of highlighting, even in the title, the ethnicity of the person concerned, arguing: "If a Jamaican had done this, would [they] have written 'A Black sends...', or if he/she was an Israeli Jew, 'a Jew sends...?' This contravenes the Press Complaints Commissions' (PCC) Code of Practice, which states in article 12 (ii), that 'Details of an individual's race, colour, religion, sexual orientation, physical or mental illness or disability must be avoided unless genuinely relevant to the story'."
 
The Mail's representative acknowledged the concerns, stating: "I can well understand those objections and I think it would have been much better if our web site had changed the wording." He added: "The online journalists work at huge speed and, had they had more time for reflection, I am sure they would have seen the danger... I have pointed out this error to our on line editors and the archive is being changed."
 
Responses are pending from the Daily Telegraph and the Sun, which carried the story with similar wording.

Further sources:

Daily Mail Reporter, The Daily Mail, ' Wealthy Sheikh flies his Lamborghini 6,500'

Neil Syson, The Sun, 'Sheikh flies Lamborghini 6,500 miles to Britain for oil'

Laura Clout, The Daily Telegraph, 'Sheikh sends luxury 'Batman' car to London and'