Andrew Norfolk's continuing coverage in The Times of the case of the five-year-old Christian girl placed into the care of Muslims families by Tower Hamlets Council is now being strongly countered by the BBC News website.
Since the story's initial reporting, the BBC website has posted a video headlined 'My Muslim family fostered kids from different faiths' and featured a full-length article headlined 'My Muslim family and our foster kids' - both based on the same family and both promoting a positive view of Muslim fostering of non-Muslim children. The BBC's purpose in vigorously pushing such a story isn't hard to guess.
Three new articles have been published today following yesterday's ruling that the girl should be removed from the Muslim family now caring for her and placed with her maternal grandmother instead (as reported in this morning's Times): Ruling over 'Muslim foster case' girl; Muslim foster case: The rules and the reality; and 'No concerns' with mixed faith foster case.
The last of those articles - by Martin Bashir and Callum May - is the most remarkable in that it abruptly dismisses The Times's take on the story in its opening paragraph - a statement which to anyone who has read about the story elsewhere might sound uncannily like a 'nothing to see here' kind of statement:
There were no concerns about the welfare of a Christian girl said to have been fostered by a Muslim family, a family court judge has ruled.
And that's that as far as the ruling itself is concerned, despite it seeming to be a very limited take on the judge's ruling compared to other reports - and very different to that of Andrew Norfolk today.
The Bashir/May article - just as the main BBC report this morning did - then spends much of the rest of its time giving the Council's defence while focusing repeatedly of criticism of the newspaper reporting of the story.
It reads like a rebuttal.
According to Mr. Norfolk, however, the judge specifically praised the Times in her ruling (saying it "acted responsibly in raising 'very concerning' matters of 'legitimate public interest'), and, contrary to the BBC report, suggested that the judge did have concerns given that she said that councils should seek "culturally-matched placements" for vulnerable children:
None of those direct quotes appears in those BBC's reports.
The full court order is apparently going to be published. This is absolutely vital here as the BBC's take on what Khatun Sapnara ruled and the Times's take on what she ruled are so wildly different that one media organisation must be grossly misreporting the story, and could even end up being seriously discredited over this.
P.S. Newssniffer shows that the Bashir/May report has been edited, possibly to tone down the impression of editorialising. The first version read:
P.S. Newssniffer shows that the Bashir/May report has been edited, possibly to tone down the impression of editorialising. The first version read:
Contrary to some media reports, the family was English-speaking.The revised version reads:
Contrary to some media reports the council claimed the foster family was English-speaking.
