Poking accusatory fingers

This week's Newswatch featured an interview with the BBC's security correspondent Frank Gardner, who gave a revealing insight into the way the BBC thinks, especially regarding the way the corporation seeks to differentiate its reporting of domestic British jihadi terrorists from that of other media outlets:

Of course, if it happens over here we have to be incredibly mindful of the law and judicial process, and particularly not the prejudice any trial. Now, I can remember back in the early days in 2002 when I started covering this stuff having come back from the Middle East, there would be lurid headlines in the press about ricin plots on Tube trains and, I mean, the press would be pretty slapdash and quite bigoted sometimes and I think we, the media, have to be very, very careful not to poke accusatory fingers at people or communities who don't deserve it.

It's certainly fair to say that Frank Gardner and the BBC have been "very, very careful" not to poke accusatory fingers at one particular community - the 'community' from which almost all the terrorism facing us now originates.

So careful in fact that the BBC is often well behind the curve compared to other media organisations when it comes to reporting and investigating such stories. And after they do get round to reporting them, the BBC then often seems to be either downplaying or sanitising them.

It's also notable that, apparently somewhat like Gordon Brown with Mrs Duffy, Frank Gardner appears to feel that the well-founded fears about Muslim violence from within our own country, as reflected by the press, are "quite bigoted".