Record complaints filed over UK press smear of anti-genocide artist Misan Harriman

The highest recorded volume of complaints has been made to a UK media watchdog against right-wing news outlets accused of a coordinated smear of Misan Harriman, an Oscar-nominated photographer and Southbank Centre chair.

The complaint tool, set up by media accountability platform NewsCord, surpassed 50,000 submissions after just 48 hours of being posted, and has now registered over 80,000 complaints. 

This more than triples the previous record of around 25,000 complaints made to the Independent Press Standards Organisation (Ipso) over Jeremy Clarkson’s 2022 column on Meghan Markle in The Sun.

Harriman came under attack by the British press after sharing a post questioning why the police and media ignored a Muslim victim targeted prior to the Golders Green attack on two Jewish men.

He also shared a video focused on community building in light of Reform's local election wins, which used a quote from Jewish-American writer Susan Sontag about human behaviour.

He was accused of spreading a “Golders Green ‘conspiracy’”, despite the question he raised being based in fact – the papers repeatedly referred to “two men stabbed”, when it was in fact three – and even though the press used an out-of-context clip from the video to falsely allege he was comparing Reform voters to the Nazis.

In response, more than 250 celebrities have signed an open letter backing Harriman – including Gary Lineker, Louis Theroux, Annie Lennox, Greta Thunberg and Mark Ruffalo.

The letter, published by non-profit organisation Good Law Project, says that “the purpose of the smear campaign, which… is entirely without foundation in fact, is to traduce and marginalise Misan” as well as “to send a message to others that if they speak out, they will be subject to harassment and threats”.

“We believe that safeguarding freedom of expression is essential to a healthy democracy. And that trying to silence critics of Israel by smearing them as antisemitic does not protect Britain’s Jewish community," the letter continued.

Harriman is a long-time activist for social justice: as an ambassador for Save the Children, a nominee for Amnesty UK’s People’s Human Rights Champion and an advocate against genocide in Sudan, Congo and Gaza.

Harriman regularly photographs London's pro-Palestine marches, including a 2024 image of a Muslim man and a Jewish man holding a sign together calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, which was auctioned to raise money for Palestine.

“We stand with Misan Harriman,” concluded the letter, which has so far attracted over 15,000 signatories. 

On Tuesday, a separate letter was also sent by a cross-party group of 20 parliamentarians to culture secretary Lisa Nandy, denouncing the campaign against Harriman, saying the media coverage has sought to "mischaracterise him".

"The smear campaign against Mr Harriman has attempted to portray his words in a selective manner, seemingly aimed at whipping up a furore to engineer an ever-growing environment of cancel culture," they wrote.

The parliamentarians said the campaign has been deployed by "certain right wing media outlets and backed by right wing politicians" and that its goal is "closing the space for free speech, fair critique or to justify media attacks which further marginalise minority communities".

Their letter raised concern over a “rising tendency to pressure institutions and public bodies to distance themselves from individuals who engage in legitimate public discourse”, which risked “deepening division rather than fostering social cohesion”.

'Coordinated smear campaign’

Within the space of a week, four right-wing media outlets ran almost identical pieces slandering Harriman, who is openly pro-Palestine and chair of the Southbank Centre, a major, publicly-funded arts institution.

The first was published in The Telegraph by arts correspondent Craig Simpson on 6 May, accusing Harriman of sharing a “Golders Green ‘conspiracy’” after he questioned on social media why the press and Metropolitan Police had not reported on the third victim – a Muslim – who was stabbed prior to the attack on two Jewish men in Golders Green. 

Essa Suleiman was arrested on 29 April for three charges of attempted murder committed against Ishmail Hussain, a Muslim man known to Suleiman for around 20 years, and then two Jewish men later that same day.

Although Harriman’s post was framed as a “conspiracy”, and the article claimed the third victim received “widespread coverage”, the Met Police’s official post on X only referred to “two men stabbed”, while multiple outlets, including SkyNews, Channel 5 and the BBC, omitted Hussain from their headlines.

The same correspondent wrote another article for The Telegraph four days later, claiming that Harriman “compare[d] Reform victory to the Holocaust”.

The smear was based on a 57-second clip taken from a longer video reflecting on Reform’s local election success, in which Harriman said in reference to a quote from Susan Sontag: “She said when thinking about the Holocaust, 10 percent of people in any population are cruel no matter what, and 10 percent is merciful no matter what, and the other – this is important – the other remaining 80 percent could be moved in either direction.

The story was then picked up by the Daily Mail, GB News and the Daily Express, who ran the same misrepresentation of Harriman's remarks alongside commentary from Reform MP Robert Jenrick, who called for him to be removed from his position in the Southbank.

Nima Akram, the founder of NewsCord, told Middle East Eye that the outlets “coordinate because they share a political project”: one devoted to “weakening publicly-funded culture, attacking pro-Palestine voices, and using cultural figures as proxies for pressuring Labour into right-wing policy”.

“Ipso has a duty to act,” Akram said, claiming that “if it cannot enforce its own accuracy code against a misinformation campaign of this scale, press regulation in this country is a fiction”. 

This “cannot become the norm”, Akram explained, adding that if the media is able to get away with this level of defamation against a Black, pro-Palestine political activist for quoting Sontag and asking a factually correct question, then it sets a “precedent” and creates a “playbook” for outlets to silence dissenting voices.

“We have reached the point where truth itself is being crushed by the very institutions that are supposed to uphold it,” Harriman told Middle East Eye.

“I will never whisper about the oppressed. I stand with truth, I stand by my right to use my voice to help others,” he added.

NewsCord has called for a formal investigation by Ipso into all four outlets, as well as an acknowledgement and public correction of the misleading headlines.