Telegraph Media Group has been fined £30,000 by the ICO after it urged readers to vote Conservative.
On the day of the General Election, The Telegraph sent hundreds of thousands of emails with a plea from editor Chris Evans attached to the paper's usual morning e-bulletin. In his letter, Evans described the election as the "most important since 1979".
Subscribers had signed up to receive a daily e-bulletin, but the ICO found that, by promoting an election campaign, the paper broke rules around direct marketing as none of the subscribers had given specific consent to receive that kind of marketing.
"People may well perceive the paper's editorial content to have a political bias, but when The Telegraph emailed people directly, calling them to vote for a political party, they crossed a line," said ICO head of enforcement Steve Eckersley.
He added that readers would not "expect to be told who they should be voting for". The ICO accepted that the letter was added after a last-minute instruction from the editorial team, without enough time to properly consider that the appropriate permissions were in place.
This, and the small number of complaints received (17), were the factors when deciding the £30,000 fine. "Regardless of the circumstances, this organisation fell short of the law and we have acted," concluded Eckersley.
Movies Editor, Digital Spy Ian has more than 10 years of movies journalism experience as a writer and editor. Starting out as an intern at trade bible Screen International, he was promoted to report and analyse UK box-office results, as well as carving his own niche with horror movies, attending genre festivals around the world. After moving to Digital Spy, initially as a TV writer, he was nominated for New Digital Talent of the Year at the PPA Digital Awards. He became Movies Editor in 2019, in which role he has interviewed 100s of stars, including Chris Hemsworth, Florence Pugh, Keanu Reeves, Idris Elba and Olivia Colman, become a human encyclopedia for Marvel and appeared as an expert guest on BBC News and on-stage at MCM Comic-Con. Where he can, he continues to push his horror agenda – whether his editor likes it or not.
