Wednesday 31 August 2016

Double standards


The murder of a Polish man, Arkadiusz Jozwik, in Harlow by a gang of young thugs has provoked a good deal of revulsion, and if he was murdered simply because he was Polish then that makes his murder even more despicable. 

Driving home tonight and hearing the horrific news on PM, I noted that PM focused almost exclusively on the possibility of it being a 'hate crime' and what that might mean. I also noted that Carolyn Quinn didn't hesitate to link the possibility of a 'hate crime' to the Brexit debate in her interview with the pro-Remain Conservative MP Robert Halfon, asking:
Are there any grounds to suspect that attacks on [Polish people living in the UK] or bad treatment of those people has intensified as a result of the Brexit debate?
The contrast with how the BBC reports attacks by people shouting 'Allahu Akbar' before committing similarly atrocious murders is striking. 

There they tend, very heavily, to avoid speculating on any such political/religious/racist motives. Here they tread far less cautiously. 

This isn't the first time, of course. The example of the BBC's swift (and heavy) reporting of the 'Britain First!' cry reporting in the murder of Jo Cox, in contrast to their widely-noted reluctance to quote cries of 'Allahu Akbar' in several recent murders (including mass murders) of the continent, shows a ongoing and alarming double standard in the BBC's reporting. 

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