It's a strange thing....
For many years the BBC has frequently been guilty of downplaying or, much more seriously, completely censoring the racial or religious aspects of certain kinds of news story - such as the grooming scandals in places like Rotherham and Rochdale by predominantly Muslim gangs of mainly Pakistani or Bangladeshi origin.
Now, I think he BBC is still frequently guilty of downplaying such angles (doubtless in the interests of social cohesion) but I have to say that, as far as I can see, the corporation is now much less likely to completely censors such things - at least in the British context.
And that (in my book) is a step forward (whatever the reasons for it).
******
Take tonight's BBC One's News at Six.
It covered the sentencing of nine members of a predominantly Muslim Rochdale paedophile gang.
That news was reported 21 minutes into the programme and given 16 seconds.
Fiona Bruce read out the following, beginning with the men's ethnic background:
It covered the sentencing of nine members of a predominantly Muslim Rochdale paedophile gang.
That news was reported 21 minutes into the programme and given 16 seconds.
Fiona Bruce read out the following, beginning with the men's ethnic background:
Nine men of Pakistani and Bangladeshi heritage have been jailed for up to 25 years for sexual offences against a teenage girl in Rochdale. A tenth man was jailed last year. The girl told police she'd been groomed by a large number of men in the town from the age of 14.
The strange thing here though is that BBC One's News at Six actually got its facts wrong when it talked of "nine men of Pakistani and Bangladeshi heritage" being sentenced today. One of the nine paedophiles - David Law - was not "of Pakistani and Bangladeshi heritage". So that's a serious factual error on the BBC's part.
I'm guessing, on the back of that, that the BBC will now get complaints from certain 'interested parties' accusing them of 'racism' or 'Islamophobia'.
And what then? Will the BBC start self-censoring itself again?
The BBC seems to be in a bit of a mess about how to cover such stories. Why is it mentioning heritage in these cases but doesn't say in various other cases the people were "of Lithuanian heritage" or "Roma heritage".
ReplyDeleteIt's clear that they are mentioning it because it is of some relevance, but as we all know the real link between these gangs is nearly always that they are followers of Islam. The BBC never highlights that, nor the explanation for the horrific victimisation of young Kaffir women, in other words that it is in accord with Sharia law and general behaviour towards Kaffirs as found also in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and other Muslim countries.
OFF TOPIC: Very odd More or Loss prog on Radio 4 today (Friday) looking at the costs of EU membership/withdrawal. After a while they got on to comparing the £8.5 billion net cost of EU membership (on their analysis) with the impact of a plus or negative of an annual 0.1% GDP growth rate. But strangely they seemed to assume the EU contribution would remain the same if GDP went up. In fact our EU contribution would rise steeply if our growth rate exceeded that of other EU member states.
ReplyDelete