Catching up

Today's From Our Own Correspondent saw the BBC's Emma Jane Kirby return to a story she's covered before: the tale of an opposition radio station in Syria (presently based in Istanbul) called Radio Alwan. She seems to be heavily emotionally invested in it.

Guess who the main 'baddie' of the story turned out to be? Clue: He's a president. Well, if you said 'President Assad' you were close but not correct. Here's the real answer:

Like many NGO's in north-west Syria Radio Alwan has fallen victim to the Trump administration's decision last Easter to pull $200 million of funding for Syria's stabilisation projects. That news, Sami recounts quietly, his voice reverberating a little over our Skype line, came completely out of the blue and felt like a strike to the head.

More on Brexit Street

Still catching up....

Here's something I partly 'grabbed' while on holiday (whilst obviously not being on holiday enough!).

It relates to Emma Jane Kirby's Brexit Street feature on Radio 4's PM - and adds to our previous posts about it.

Please have a read of David Keighley's transcription of the 5 September episode of Brexit Street and witness again everything we've talked about before being played out yet again. 

The episode brought the following delightful reactions on Twitter (quoted verbatim):

Listening to #bbcpm 'Brexit Street" and feeing so disheartened by xenophobic rhetoric and more meaningless statements re 'Great' Britain.

#BBCr4today #BBCPM Did you listen to #Brexit st, my god, how thick, he worked in Holland ffs, no free movement no job in Holland

Most ignorant #brexit voxpop ever on #bbcpm just now - from Thornaby-on-Tees. I shudder. #brexitstreet

The more I hear the"thoughts"of #bbcpm #Brexit street residents the more I despise Cameron for mishandling #EUref & Johnson Gove Farage etc

#bbcpm -still undermining UK by seeking out clueless wallies supporting #Brexit - #deceitful #patronising #exploitative #shameful.

@BBCPM Shocking ignorance re: migrants/Brexit on PM just now. Disconnect of politicians and voters so clear 

Just listening to report on @BBCPM from "#Brexit Street" in Stockton. Alarming misunderstanding of #EURef facts. #bbcpm

@BBCPM see the BBC is getting out the anti-Brexit propaganda again. Creating a caricature of Brexiteers as people who lack insight. #Biased

Are these #bbcpm Brexit vox pops just designed to piss people off? Cos if so, they're working pretty well

#Bbcpm dispatches from #brexit street are bloody funny it's like someone put alot of tabloids in a blender.

The voice of Brexit on #bbcpm. Awesome

I assure you I won't be seeking out Brexit St. It's too depressing.

#bbcpm @bbcpm

Epic example on @bbcpm about how people who voted #brexit knowing nothing about impact of it. Think asylum seekers "steal" jobs. FFS.

Conversation on @BBCPM: we should leave Europe now. 'Who do you usually vote for?' Nobody. I live in Malta. 

A thicko from Tyneside @BBCPM lives in Malta 9 months of the year but calls himself an 'expat' He voted Brexit to get 'immigrants' out of UK

When I think #voteleave #brexit types are simple, it's because of the people live on air now! @BBCRadio4 @BBCPM

If you are a #brexit voter, listen to your fellow travellers now on #bbcpm and weep

#bbcpm Hear the luvvies educating the Brexit voters who all drink mild in whippet strewn public bars why they should have voted remain.

The BBC gets so much flak for its supposed 'left wing bias' yet they've put so many xenophobic #Brexit morons on lately #BBCPM #BrexitStreet

I'm really getting sick of hearing interviews with ignorant racists on @bbcpm & @bbcnews where their bigotry is not shutdown

That's quite a range of responses but all of them back up the obvious point about this deeply objectionable series: that it portrays the 'typical' Leave voter (who's no such thing, given that this is a highly unrepresentative street) as a 'stupid racist' and allows the nastier Remain-supporting elements to have a field day at Leave voters' expense.

Does Emma Jane ever worry about how her carefully-selected Brexit Street Leave voters are being so regularly and roundly mocked and insulted on Twitter? 

Did Mark Easton make a beeline today towards Leave voters who come across as uneducated and/or racist?

The first post-Brexit edition of the BBC's Newswatch (1 July) featured a complaint that BBC reporters, post-vote, had been "making a beeline" to film Leave voters "who come across as uneducated and/or racist". The complainant called that "unhelpful".

The BBC's Head of Newsgathering, Jonathan Munro, dismissed this charge and implied that it was in fact the complainant who was actually engaging in unhelpful stereotyping:

On the 'uneducated' point, we need to talk to the whole of our audience, whatever their level of education might be, and the gentleman who made that point there is making a judgement about them that we're not making.

Exhibit A in the case against the BBC was an Ed Thomas report for BBC One's News at Ten which focused on the fears of Eastern European migrants in Leeds juxtaposed with the views of various anti-immigration voters, including a self-declared fascist with 'England' tattooed on his neck and a swastika tattooed on his eagerly-displayed biceps. The latter provoked most controversy with Newswatch viewers, but Jonathan Munro protested the BBC's innocence over it and implicitly criticised Newswatch for even raising it:

In the clip you showed at the beginning of the compilation you showed one interview with a gentleman with a swastika tattoo. That was filmed in Canvey Island for an edition of the Ten O'Clock News a couple of nights ago. We ran two reports on that programme talking to ordinary people in ordinary walks of life - one from the north-east of England and the other from Canvey. I think in those reports we must have interviewed 10, 11, 12 different people. One of them was a tattoo...You chose to show that. I don't think that was a representative sample at all of what we did, and if you look back at the programme the vast majority of people in those two reports were would you might call, to be honest, normal, everyday, ordinary people with perfectly valid and honourable intentions, whichever way they voted.

Mr Munro was so confident-sounding that I initially missed the fact that he was factually incorrect.

Yes, there was a report from Canvey Island that night but "the gentleman with a swastika tattoo" didn't appear in it. He was in the other report - the one from Leeds.

And watching that report again suggests that Mr Munro was being somewhat disingenuous.

Besides Swastika-Guy, the two other "everyday, ordinary people" who voted Leave and were selected as 'vox pops' in that Leeds report were (a) "a second-generation immigrant...frustrated at Europeans arriving in a place he calls 'home'", and (b) a chap called Wayne who wants migrants to "go home....as soon as possible" and who was led by Ed's leading questions and narrative build-up into sounding like a racist empowered "by the Brexit vote".

(Click on the link above to see for yourselves). 

*******

I remembered this Newswatch exchange after watching tonight's News at Six.

It was Mark Easton's strikingly biased report on the risks posed by a post-Brexit reduction in EU immigration that brought it back to mind.

Mark 'reported' that agriculture, the hospitality sector, the care sector, construction and the NHS faced serious risks from a post-Brexit reduction in EU immigration. "Shortages" and "collapse" could result, said Mark. (It was a typical Mark Easton report).

He then stopped off in Leave-voting Rochester to canvass the views of three 'vox pops'. 

Did Mark Easton "make a beeline" to film Leave voters "who come across as uneducated and/or racist" here? 

Well, here's the first pro-Leave/anti immigration 'vox pop' in Mark Easton's report tonight: 

And here's what he said:

I think they should all go back to where they belong really, cos our country's ruined now, innit? There's no houses for us. There's no jobs.

Next came a lady who said:

I'd like them to do what we voted for really, which is to make it much lower, much fairer, a points-based system. 

A perfectly reasonable point - though I suspect, like many a viewer, I didn't immediately catch what she'd said as I was too busy gawping at her remarkably unhealthy-looking teeth - quite the worst-looking set of teeth I've seen on TV for many a year.  

(I'm sure she's an absolutely lovely person and I feel awful for writing that, but I really don't think I would have been in the minority among News at Six viewers in thinking in such a shallow, unkind way about her teeth).

Then came a pro-immigration voter....

....who made a longer, more impassioned and much more eloquent case for mass EU migration, echoing many of the points Mark Easton himself was making earlier - though without the veneer of BBC impartiality, of course.

Watching it, I felt just like that initial complainant to Newswatch. It did seem to me as if Mark Easton had very carefully selected which three 'vox pops' he put into his report here. But I could also hear my own inner Jonathan Munro saying:

On the 'uneducated' point, we need to talk to the whole of our audience, whatever their level of education might be, and the gentleman who made that point there is making a judgement about them that we're not making.

Am I the one in the wrong here for thinking really bad things about the uneducated-sounding topless guy and the woman with the disjointed, yellow teeth (the two anti-immigration 'vox pops')?

Did no such wicked thoughts cross Mark Easton's mind, even for a single second, when he selected them for his report and then juxtaposed them with an eloquent, 'normal-looking' pro-immigration guy? 

Really?

Given Mark Easton's past record, I'm not willing to give him the benefit of the doubt about that. He can be a highly manipulative reporter, and this felt highly manipulative to me. 

*******

And, moreover, what is Emma Jane Kirby's Brexit Street series for PM if not the initial complainer to Newswatch's point writ large?

That entire series so far has been"making a beeline" towards Leave voters "who come across as uneducated and/or racist". 

More on 'Brexit Street'

Westbury Street mosque

News-watch's David Keighley has turned detective and, in a brilliant piece of sleuthing (aided by quite a bit of local knowledge), he's pinned down the exact street that Radio 4's PM is using for 'Brexit Street'. 

He identifies it as Westbury Street.

The complaint we've all being making here about 'Brexit Street'...

...(the single unidentified street in Thornaby-on-Tees which Radio 4 is using for an entire year to represent the effects of Brexit on what it claims to be a typical Leave-voting street)...

...is that it sounds extremely unrepresentative of Leave-voting areas - not just across the country as a whole but locally as well. 

The street - from Emma Jane Kirby's reports at least - sounds to be largely occupied by (a) people who don't work and (b) asylum seekers from beyond the EU.

Westbury Street, David writes, is just such an unrepresentative street. 

For starters, it is unusually 'down-market', even by the standards of the area. 

House prices (around £40-60K) are around half the local average. And thhe local average is even lower than the regional average (£120K). And the average in England is now around £230K, some four times higher than on 'Brexit Street'.

And as for those asylum seekers that PM is featuring so prominently (stressing their feelings of isolation - and heavily hinting at racism from the Leave-voting locals)? 

Well, Westbury Street again proves unrepresentative. As with house prices, Thornaby-on-Tees is untypical of the NE as a whole:

Further spadework reveals that Middlesbrough and Stockton town councils are the only two in the North-east which are accepting asylum seekers on a large scale. There are nearly 700 in the local government area covering Thornaby, equating to one in 280 local residents. 

That said, Westbury Street has only 120 households, and the local average house occupation rate is 2.3 – so it would be expected that only one or two residents there would be asylum seekers. Kirby, however, says there are ‘large numbers’ living there (and of course she’s interviewed many of them) – suggesting that the local council is using the street for their re-settlement because housing there is especially cheap.

Emma Jane has, so far, mentioned three separate houses containing migrants. (So there could be even more).

She's also made it clear that those houses contain groups of immigrants.

So that's going to amount to considerably more than "one or two residents" who are asylum seekers living on 'Brexit Street' (around 9-12 asylum seekers, maybe?), thus making it a particularly extreme example. 

Plus (h/t David), Westbury Street is also unusual in having a mosque (at Nos. 127-129) - a fact Emma Jane hasn't yet introduced into her Brexit Street series. 

This whole thing is shaping up into being one of the most striking piece of BBC bias for a long time - David calls it "a travesty of balanced journalism" - and there's still nearly a year of it still to come.

It's a depressing carpet ride/Every door will slam shut/To Unhappy people like you...

While I've been off on my three-week blogging sabbatical (family-related, but in a good way), Radio 4's PM has been busy pursuing its coverage of 'Brexit Street' - especially over the past week. 

The series (which Radio 4 intends to stretch over many months) focuses on a single street in Thornaby-on-Tees in order, as it says itself, to monitor the effects of Brexit over time. Thornaby was a largely Leave-voting area. 

The problem with 'Brexit Street' is that it isn't representative of Leave-voting areas. 

As noted before, previous episodes have shown the white inhabitants of 'Brexit Street' as being 75-80% not in paid employment (unemployed, on long term sickness benefit, in voluntary work, retired). 

And previous episodes have focused on the unusually high number of (non-EU) asylum seekers living on the street.

Hints of racism have been heavy in the air (in the BBC's reporting here).

All of which has made me very suspicious of it.

******

The latest pair of reports from Emma Jane Kirby featured (a) an update on the various asylum seekers (all lovely-sounding people with heart-tugging stories) and (b) the 'contrasting' views of an unemployed Leave supporter (very downbeat about life in general) and a Remain supporter on long-term sick (very downbeat about Brexit in particular). 

The previous report featured a Leave-supporting hairdresser and her Remain-supporting client. This had no commentary. The Leave-supporting hairdresser (who sounded charming to me) did say she'd voted "for a change" and that her daughter accused her of ruining her life by voting 'Out'/ She got an unsympathetic hearing on Twitter.  

The Twitter response has been intriguing. The pro-EU types and the Left and liberal-Left (who dominate this strand of Twitter) have gone for praising the reports' sympathetic coverage of the asylum seekers while mocking the stupidity of the featured Leave voters (such as that hairdresser). The pro-Brexit types, far fewer in number, have raged against its bias.

A possible glimpse of 'Brexit Street' (in the distance)?

The 'hairdresser report' was exceptional (so far) in not featuring the framing commentary of Emma Jane. Her commentary - such as the episode with the gloomy Leave voter and the gloomy Remain voter - has struck me as being continuously loaded (against Brexit). Here's a characteristic example:

Stockton Carnival, just over the bridge from 'Brexit Street', Peter, his wife and his two very excited little boys, are watching colourful paper dragons parade down the high street. Since the UK's decision to leave the EU, however, the news headlines haven't been too festive. According to recruiters Britain's labour market went into free fall last month with the sharpest fall in permanent job placements since 2009. It's exactly what Peter, who voted to remain, feared would happen.

And if you're hoping for a counter-balancing quote to introduce Leave-voting, depressed Mark, you'll be hoping for a long time. It never came.

******

That, unfortunately, is pretty much what you'd expect from from the BBC on this.

It's harder, however, to account for the series's sharp focus on non-EU asylum seekers - who seem, on the face of it, to have very little to do with Brexit-related matters.

Those non-EU asylum seekers, however, feel lonely and unwelcome on 'Brexit Street'. Except for the local churches, there doesn't seem to have been a great welcome for them.

Hints of racism again hang in the air on 'Brexit Street'.

The people are real. The cases are real. But the street is an extreme example and isn't even remotely representative of Leave-voting areas, so the question arises again: Is the BBC's reporting biased?

To which I'd say, very clearly, yes.

But other than in the hope of, unconsciously or otherwise, either (a) somehow scuppering Brexit or (b) advancing the cause of mass immigration (or both), to what end (he asks, rhetorically)?

Can you tell me how to get/How to get to Brexit Street?

Talking of Brexit...

There was another Brexit Street report from Emma Jane Kirby on last night's PM.

Put briefly (for those who haven't heard any of it yet), Brexit Street is a new, long-term Radio 4 feature intended to monitor - over weeks and months (and possibly years) - the effects of the Brexit vote on a single street in a town near Middlesbrough...

...a town the programme explicitly intends us to see as representative, even though 75-80% of every one of the streets residents featured so far on PM isn't in paid employment (and, thus, are far from representative of either this particular town, or any UK town, or Leave voters as a whole).

Emma Jane's first two reports crescendoed towards talk of (and complaints about) racism in the wake of the Leave vote, and last night's (third) report focused on the targets of some of that racism (including racist attacks apparently coming from the white residents of Brexit Street). 

We heard from the many asylum seekers grouped (often in large numbers) in at least three houses on Brexit Street. 

(Again the question arises: How representative a street is this?)  

Some were very hard to listen to (being upsetting).

We also heard of the "complete culture shock" suffered by some of them, 

Iranian asylum seeker, carpenter 'Jabad', "with a bewildered glance at his friend Mustapha",  told Emma Jane: "Everywhere you go in this place you can smell dope...In the afternoon everyone seems to have a bottle with them. Whether it's wine or beer everyone's always got something to make them high". 

Jalad also complained that few on the street work and that they exploit benefits - something listeners to the previous Brexit Street reports (on mainly Leave voters) might suspect is true. 

Unlike people like him, who are "looking to the future," the 'natives' are "living for today", said 'Jabad'.

Mustapha is unhappy at not having his wife and children.

******

However well-meaning her reports, Emma Jane Kirby's Brexit Street series is (so far) turning out to be a complete travesty of 'BBC impartiality'. 

In no way is this street representative of the Leave-voting parts of the UK. It's an extreme example (in more ways than one).

And it's implying that some Leave voters on the street are attacking distressed asylum seekers living next door to them. 

And it's also pushing the 'the EU has poured funds into this region, don't you realise that?' meme too (for good measure).

And it's allowing 'Newsnight audience types' to feel good about themselves and sneer at low IQ Leave-voting racists (on Twitter).

I don't doubt (as it's a balmy Saturday evening and I'm "high" on wine [sorry 'Jabad'] and probably feeling overly charitable) that Emma Jane believes that she's reporting back from a representative Leave-voting street...

...which, alas, only goes to show how madly, wildly, out-of-touch and BBC-minded she is.

Brexit Street

Radio 4's PM has just started a brand-new, spanking-new, long-term series monitoring the effects of the Leave vote on a single street in the North Yorkshire town of Thornaby-on-Tees (3 miles from Stockton-on-Tees, 4 miles from Middlesbrough) - a Leave-voting area.

This focus on the inhabitants of a single street will apparently continue over many months.

******

As several commenters have noted on Sue's characteristically out-of-this-world latest post, BBC reporter Emma Jane Kirby's reports comes from a street that isn't typical of Leave-voting streets across the country - or even the area.

Yesterday's report, for example, featured 4 vox pops. Only one of them was in paid employment. 

And today's report featured 5 vox pops. Only one of them (the same guy from the previous night) was in paid employment.

The rest were either unemployed, on the sick, in voluntary work, or (in one case) retired. 

The area, as official stats show, has a combined 7.8% total for the unemployed and those on sickness benefit. It most certainly isn't anywhere near 75% (as yesterday's report might suggest - and even today's report might suggest).

Hardly representative then.

Why's that then?

******

Yes, we've been getting to hear from some Leave voters and hearing their reasons for leaving - alongside hearing from Remain voters - but...

...I've been watching the Twitter reaction and seeing all the abuse flying in the direction of PM's selected Leave supporters. The Twitter Brigade are calling them all deluded, low-IQ, racist morons. 

Did Emma Jane Kirby see that coming?

If so, is that the answer to the above question, "Why's that then?"?

******

On today's report. moreover, Emma Jane was certainly pushing the point that the area has received huge pots of money from the EU for regional development.

(Naturally she didn't mention that this 'EU money' was pretty much 'our money' coming back to us under EU guidance). 

Her commentary pointed that out, and some of questions to her Brexit Street vox pops also pointed that out - and both did so repeatedly, as if she was trying to make a point. 

******

Also (though we're only two reports in), I note that both reports moved towards criticism of post-Brexit racism and that tonight's report was left hanging on that very point. 

******

This bears all the hallmarks of a highly manipulative piece of long-term (anti-Brexit) BBC reporting.

"Those people who are the so-called jihadists in France don't come from Islam. They come from misery."

It's hard not to bang on, however much you might not want to, when the BBC programmes you are listening to are also banging on relentlessly. 

This morning's Broadcasting House featured a lengthy report from Emma Jane Kirby on how France's young people are reacting to the massacres in Paris. 

At least that was how it was introduced. 

After a moving opening interview, however, it swiftly moved on to focus - at considerable length - on the grievances of France's Muslims, young and not-so-young. 

[Precisely 70.3% of the report was devoted to this aspect of the story. Yes, I counted].

Muslim pupils at France's first Muslim school in "a deprived Parisian suburb", their teacher plus various experts and a group of students all expounded the point of view that France's Muslims are victims - the victims of French secularism, unemployment and politicians' (right and left) politicking at their expense. 

A typical comment, towards the end, from an anti-capitalist philosopher, Bernard Stiegler, will sum it all up and spare you having to listen to it (if you haven't already heard it):

Those people who are the so-called jihadists in France don't come from Islam. They come from misery.

Everyone (after the non-political first interviewee) agreed with that. Everyone. No alternative views were broadcast. Not one. 

It has to be said, however, that Emma Jane's report isn't unusual. Her BBC colleague Matthew Price has been broadcasting similarly-angled, similarly-loaded reports on Today ever since the morning after the Paris atrocity. I'm sure they both feel good about themselves for having done so. 

Whether their biased reporting distorts their listeners' understanding of the real roots of European and British Muslim jihadism (and many jihadists. including the 9/11 to the 7/7 killers, come from affluent, well-educated backgrounds), however, is the real point here - and that probably depends, to some degree, on the extent to which people only get their news from the BBC.

Nana, Dom Dom and me

Emma Jane

You won't be surprised to hear that this morning's Broadcasting House on Radio 4 also dwelt on the migration crisis in Calais. 

The opening report from Emma Jane Kirby interestingly juxtaposed two contrasting yet complementary points of view from the French inhabitants of Calais - (1) a restaurateur whose business has been severely hit by the crisis (with far fewer English customers and no Italians) and (2) a couple who love the migrants as if they were family - one of whom (the woman) gives the migrants foot massages. 

The foot-massaging couple, who had oddly baby-like names - Nana and Dom Dom - will have either struck listeners as adorably well-meaning or nigh-on certifiable. 

The curious thing was that, though the love Nana and Dom Dom felt for the migrants wasn't shared by the unfortunate restaurant owner, the latter was surprisingly complimentary about the migrants too, stressing that they are no danger and quite nice.

He seemed keener...or Emma Jane seemed keener, whichever...to suggest that the British media was over-egging the danger...

...though he did, in rather embarrassed fashion (according to Emma), add that the Australian way of dealing with things might be a bit harsh, but....(and that was left hanging in the air like a thrown boomerang paused on a YouTube video).

Was this biased? 

Why did I come away, on first thoughts, thinking that the migrants were not so dangerous as I originally thought? 

Why, on reflection, did I then distrust those first thoughts - and the BBC reporter? 

And why, on writing this post, did I apparently conclude [as it appears I've done after all] that I was being led by the hand by Emma Jane in the very direction that the BBC seems to want its audience to be led?

You are, of course, free to listen and decide for yourself.

Where the focus lies

I do worry sometimes that by focusing so much on the issue of BBC bias I might be seeing far too much through the eyes of my own bias against BBC bias. 

It's a grim fact that a Muslim has also been a victim of the terrorist atrocities in Paris - namely policeman Ahmed Merabet, murdered despite pleading for his life. It's also a blessed fact that a Muslim supermarket assistant working in the Jewish-owner grocery, Lassana Bathily, helped save 15 French Jewish people by guiding them to a freezer when all 16 of them hid from the terrorists and survived.

Is is significant vis-a-vis BBC bias or is it merely an example of me wearing my 'BBC bias'-tinted glasses then that I've been hearing the BBC vigorously pushing these stories (showing Muslims in a good light) at the expense of the stories of the five Jewish victims of the jihadist gunman? 

Because I can honestly say that I've not seen or heard very much about the Jewish victims of this atrocity anywhere on the BBC beyond their names - Yoav Hattab, Philippe Braham, Yohan Cohen and Francois-Michel Saada. Have you?

I was discussing this with Sue earlier, before listening to Radio 4's Broadcasting House. As I was about to listen to Broadcasting House, it crossed my mind to wonder - thanks to my 'BBC bias' obsession - what Islamophile angle the programme might adopt.

Within seconds of the programme beginning came this from BBC correspondent Emma Jane Kirby: 

As Paris prepares for its show of unity, I'll be reporting on the days of terror that have shattered this country and I'll speak to friends of the murdered Muslim policeman who died defending the cherished French right to say whatever one wants to say no matter who it offends.

So, is this my bias, or BBC bias? Or both?

*****

Listening on, Emma Jane gave a fascinating account of her own feelings towards Charlie Hebdo. She has a cartoon mocking Nicholas Sarkozy, drawn by a CH cartoonist, on her wall. He drew it for her during her visit to Charlie Hebdo.

She discusses France's attitude to Charlie Hebdo too - the way is was seen as the embodiment of the post-1968 French spirit, making people laugh, being defiant. That's why so many are saying, 'I am Charlie'.

She then posed a question:

There is no link insisted the French president Francois Hollande between Islam and these attacks, but many here are asking themselves if this can really be true. Can you be Charlie is you are Muslim?

Immediately, she supplied her own answer to that question:

Among the victims of the Charlie Hebdo massacre was a Muslim policeman, Ahmed Merabet. He was shot dead at point-blank range as he tried to intercept the fleeing gunmen. Trending on Twitter now is another hashtag, I am Ahmed. In a couscous restaurant close to the offices of Charlie Hebdo, his bereaved friends told me who Ahmed was and what he stood for.

And very moving it was too.

Of course, it still doesn't dispel my feeling that the BBC is on a mission here. Especially as Emma Jane went on to ask them about the 'backlash' and the possibility of the far-right taking advantage of the situation. The message was that 'I am Charlie' and 'I am Ahmed' are one and the same, and that "if ever France needed to unify it's now".