Messages

Anna Holligan

There's something I heard on Radio 4 the other day that's been worrying me.

I'm not a foreign reporter and I can only guess how foreign reporters might feel when confronted with something harrowing, but I've also become deeply cynical when a BBC reporter seems to be using something harrowing to make a point. 

I was listening to this week's Sunday on Radio 4 and heard BBC reporter Anna Holligan being interviewed about the terrorist attacks in Brussels. As the discussion neared its close she began spontaneously talking about an experience she'd had this past week. 

She'd interviewed a distraught mother who didn't know whether her daughter had survived the attack on the airport, and it turned out that the young woman hadn't survived it. 

That must be distressing for a reporter, but...

Anna - who must have subsequently checked social media sites for the murdered woman - then recounted how the murdered daughter had made a comment on Facebook following last November's Islamist atrocities in Paris. She said she'd found what the daughter wrote to be "so poignant".

What the poor young woman had written, which Anna chose to highlight, was (in its entirety):

The ignorant spreading of anti-Muslim sentiment and propaganda does nothing but benefit ISIS. 

I'm pretty sure Anna Holligan meant us to take that as a reason not to engage in "anti-Muslim sentiment and propaganda" but, instead, I took it as, alas, proving that however good-hearted, liberal-minded, trusting and well-disposed towards Muslims you might be (whether you're a random victim of terrorism or a BBC reporter), your good will (or naivety) still won't protect you against the kind of people you seek to 'understand' - the fanatically-religious Muslim terrorist.

Whatever way you look at it, that is poignant.