Catching up again....
There was a very important post from Pugnazious at Biased BBC on Friday looking at the BBC's treatment of Tory London Mayoral candidate Shaun Bailey.
Here, as an example of the BBC's coverage, is the start of the report on the BBC News website:
Now, as Pugnazious says, if you read that 2005 pamphlet you find that Shaun Bailey wasn't saying what either his critics are accusing him of saying or what the BBC have been reporting him as saying.
"The comments in the pamphlet have been taken, twisted, misquoted and distorted in order to portray Bailey as some kind of racist and Islamophobe", Pugnazious wrote. "Needless to say his meaning and intent, obvious to any reader, is not to say any such things."
Pugnazious is entirely correct about that. Mr Bailey's actual meaning and intent is very obvious.
This is what Shaun Bailey wrote:
As Pugnazious writes:
As you can see he does not say Islam and Hinduism ‘robs Britain of its community’, what he is saying is not teaching those black youths their own Christian, western culture robs them of a sense of community, identity and unity which is needed for any successful society. He is not in any way blaming Muslims and Hindus for this, he is not criticising teaching ethnic cultures but criticising the lack of teaching of the British culture….as if we are ashamed of it….as the BBC is of course. Hence people don’t want to identify as ‘British’, or maybe cannot as they have no idea what being ‘British’ means….always told it is a bad thing to be British.
So when the BBC captions its image of Shaun Bailey with the words 'In 2005, Shaun Bailey warned accommodating Muslim and Hindu cultures "robs Britain of its community"' and then repeats that claim in the report's second paragraph they are misreporting what he said.
They are also misreporting what he said when they go on to say that he said that 'accommodating Muslim and Hindu cultures...could lead the country into a "crime-riddled cesspool"' (literally joining the dots).
His opponents are trying to smear him and the BBC is simply parroting those smears as facts. That seems very clear to me.
Please read the BBC report for yourselves and then read the Multiculturalism section of the 2005 pamphlet and see if you agree that this is a particularly poor piece of BBC reporting.
It's a long pamphlet - 64 pages and the relevant bit quoted above is at page 32. I've got to page 43.
ReplyDeleteWithout the wider context of the previous 30 pages, that passage is open to interpretation, largely because it is clumsily and unclearly worded.
This reminds me of how the Conservative candidate for mayor before, Goldsmith, was destroyed by an allegation of racism and being anti-Muslim which was used to smear him, based on something he said about some of Khan's associations in the past.
I remember the savage attack he was subjected to on the Sunday Politics, London segment, by the former regular male presenter, whose name I forget, who hasn't been seen on it for the past year or so. He was finished. Bailey will be the same.
The point about Goldsmith's attack on Khan was it that it solidly based in fact. Khan campaigned on behalf of Babar Ahmed, opposing his extradition to the USA on terrorism-related offences. Note - campaigned and not "legally represented" as Khan often tries to imply. Once extradited, Ahmed pleaded guilty to a terrorism related offence. Political snakes like Barry Gardiner now try and present this as a "racist" attack on Khan.
DeleteIt is as one can see complete BS.
Khan was tied to many radical Islamists back in the day. He seemed to change tune a bit after being seceretly recorded by the secret services. What happened exactly I doubt we'll ever know.
Yes fully agree exactly the same as they did with Zach Goldsmith
DeleteI also remember on the Today program I think it was Montague virtually screaming at Goldsmith while Khan was given a very easy ride by Humphries
The BBC does NOT allow another Conservative Mayor!
Someone has started a 'race row' over a sociology textbook which says 'In Caribbean families, the fathers and husbands are largely absent and women assume the most responsibility in child-rearing.' That's what Shaun Bailey was saying in his pamphlet about the families in his working-class estates. Wait till they get around to him on this as well as the other thing.
ReplyDeleteThe row starter copied in Lammy and Abbott. Lammy was indignant of course but in his indignation couldn't manage to spell Caribbean. Someone else described it as 'abhorrent' and the under-pressure publisher has withdrawn the book for review. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6253343/Publishers-withdraw-GCSE-textbook-said-men-largely-absent-Caribbean-families.html
Shaun Bailey and 'Labour race hate trolls' on today's front page of The Evening Standard
ReplyDeletehttps://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/tory-mayor-contender-shaun-bailey-targeted-by-labour-race-hate-trolls-a3957216.html
Who started all this anyway? I forget.
See how these things are taken and used, this time by a BBC and Sky regular, Ayesha Hazarika:
ReplyDelete'...He also said that celebrating Hindu and Muslim festivals have turned Britain into a crime-riddled cesspool — which will go down a treat in London. ...'
It's fine to falsify and misrepresent what someone wrote, so long as you then climb to the moral height and proclaim: 'Racist language such as “Uncle Tom” and calling him a “coconut” is totally unacceptable and as bad as the Islamophobia Khan faced during the last mayoral contest in 2016. If you’re anti-racism you call this out regardless of your party politics. I’m a supporter and friend of Khan, and I’m glad he has personally condemned these attacks.
This contest must be about ideas, not race hate.'
Nice set of values there: feel free to spout about ideas while not bothering to understand or represent the ideas correctly but it's all fine and dandy so long as you don't use an incorrect word. How it rings with certainty and righteousness.
https://www.standard.co.uk/comment/comment/women-have-been-lulled-into-thinking-things-would-get-better-after-metoo-we-were-wrong-a3958346.html