Tuesday 30 November 2021

The BBC, Sky and grooming gangs


A week ago today Sky News at Ten led on new evidence about grooming gangs preying on young girls in Hull, with one girl telling them that she was raped by 150 men. The men involved are reported to have 'Asian or Middle Eastern' backgrounds. A series of reports followed for nearly a week, featuring the evidence and testimony of the alleged victims, and it was given round-the-clock coverage by the broadcaster.
 
Meanwhile, the BBC has today posted a video about the Rochdale grooming gang: ‘My life just started crumbling’: Is British media Islamophobic? on how a Muslim man was wrongly accused by the Mail of Sunday of being a ''fixer'' linked to the Rochdale grooming gang. 

That striking contrast led me to do a spot of research...

A search on TVEyes for the words 'grooming' AND 'gang' during the past six months [1 June-30 November] brought up just one mention on the BBC News Channel - that was on Friday 10 September 2021 at 1.55pm. 

A search for words 'grooming' AND 'gangs' brought up another single mention  - on the BBC News Channel on Tuesday 5 October 2021 at 12.00pm - and that was only because the BBC was broadcasting Priti Patel's Conservative Party Conference speech live and she used the term 'grooming gangs'. 

Contrast that to Sky News over the same six month period. The term 'grooming gangs' was used on 20 separate occasions and the term 'grooming gang' 44 other times.

So though it may feel as if Sky are as bad as the BBC sometimes, they aren't in this case.

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