SHIFTING GEARS

Clarkson’s Meghan Markle Column Eyed by Press Watchdog After 25K Complaints

The former ‘Top Gear’ host’s column generated more than 25,000 complaints to the Independent Press Standards Organization.

Following the virulent backlash to an article by former Top Gear host Jeremy Clarkson, the United Kingdom’s primary press regulator said it had launched an investigation into the column, published in December by The Sun. On Thursday, the Independent Press Standards Organization confirmed that Clarkson’s column was its most complained-about article ever, drawing more than 25,100 angry notices from readers. Ipso, as the organization is known, said it will take forward complaints from two parties, The Fawcett Society, a women’s rights group, and The Wilde Foundation, an abuse survivors’ network. Both groups complained that Clarkson’s article breached clauses of accuracy, harassment, and discrimination in the U.K. Editors’ Code of Practice, which Ipso oversees. In Clarkson’s column, for which he later apologized, the 62-year-old broadcaster said he hated Meghan Markle “on a cellular level,” and was “dreaming” of the day she would be “made to parade naked” through Britain while crowds chanted and threw “lumps of excrement at her.”