Breaking news...

And on the story goes...

The Daily Telegraph (online) is now leading with a story it first reported an hour ago:

French soldier stabbed in neck while patrolling Paris business district
Man of North African origin flees scene after soldier patrolling area of Paris stabbed, raising fears of a Woolwich copycat attack.

The Daily Mail has the same story:

French anti-terror soldier has throat slashed in Paris by 'jihab-wearing man of North African origin in Woolwich copy-cat attack'

The Sky News website has it as one of its top stories:

French Soldier Stabbed In Neck In Paris

The French president says authorities are investigating any possible links with the attack on Drummer Lee Rigby in Woolwich.  

As does ITV News:

French authorities investigate soldier stabbing

French authorities are investigating any possible links with an attack a soldier near Paris with the Woolwich attack on Drummer Rigby.

Google News shows that media organisations from the Independent to the Daily Mirror, from the Belfast Telegraph to the Irish Independent and from the Washington Post to the Herald Sun are also reporting this major breaking story, and have been doing so for some minutes. 

Remarkably, the BBC News website is not yet carrying the story - as of 21:25 BST. What does that say about the reporting of the BBC?


UPDATE (21.35): Ah, here it is:

25 May 2013 Last updated at 21:24

French soldier in uniform stabbed near Paris

The story hasn't appeared on the BBC's Home page yet, merely appearing on its World page (as the third-placed story). Why not?

UPDATE (21.39): It's now flashing as one of the 'breaking news' banners at the top of the BBC's Home page, behind the football. Still no article on the Home Page. Even weirder, the BBC article on the World page gives none of the information given elsewhere about the attacker's appearance:

He was attacked from behind by a man wielding a knife or a box-cutter. The assailant, whose identity is unknown, ran away and is being sought by police.
No motive has been established for the attack.

Isn't that odd?

UPDATE (21.50): Compare the above with ITV News, who (over 2 hours ago) informed their readers:

French daily Le Parisien cited police sources as saying the suspected attacker was a bearded man of North African origin about 30 years old, and was wearing an Arab-style garment under his jacket.

ITV, like Sky and most of Britain's leading newspapers, has it as a top story.

And the Independent is more informative too:

Breaking: French soldier stabbed in the neck in Paris
Police are seeking a suspect of North African origin

UPDATE (22.00): Switching on the TV, Sky News is leading with the news of the stabbing of the French anti-terrorist soldier. "A bearded man of possibly North African appearance", said the Sky newsreader. An update from a CBS correspondent follows.

The BBC News Channel is not leading with the story. The story is mentioned in the running thread at the bottom of the screen, but the story is not being being drawn attention to by the newsreader. No reports, no interviews. Silence. Extraordinary.

UPDATE (22.14): The BBC is definitely downplaying this story. The News Channel mentioned it at 22:11, passing over in just over 20 seconds, making no mention of any description of the attacker(s), not reporting the intent to kill (which Sky reported a French minister as stating), saying the injuries weren't life threatening...and then moving quickly on.

UPDATE (22.30): OK, a final sum-up. Sky News is still leading with this story. The BBC News Channel is still barely reporting it. (Their half-hour headlines failed to even mention it). The Sky News and ITV News websites have it as a lead story on their home pages, while the BBC News Channel had opted not to feature an article about it on their home page. The main British newspapers (excepting the Guardian) are making it a main story too. The BBC's online article, already slipping down the agenda on the World page, has been updated to include the information that "France is on high alert following a threat from the North African wing of al Qaeda, related to the country's involvement in Mali" - though it leaves its readers to infer why that might be of any relevance to the story at hand. 

Angles

It's in the nature of blogs to be both personal and topical. My posts tend to be neither, but this one will be both...

The savage murder of Drummer Lee Rigby by two British-born, second generation immigrant Muslim converts, one of whom spouted religious (Islamic) and political (Islamist) justifications for their sick killing of a young British soldier, has shocked, disgusted, depressed and confused me. 

From discussions with friends, family and work colleagues I know that I'm far from being alone in feeling this way. Acts of sectarian murder aren't exactly new to the British Isles (think of the Troubles in Northern Ireland) but this kind of 'look-at-me-and-film-me'  butchery and would-be beheading of a serving British soldier with a young wife and a two-year-old son by a pair of Muslim fellow Brits is - however expected, given the many threats of Islamists to do just this kind of thing - something truly sickening and unprecedented for this country. It's very hard to come to terms with, especially given a personal, family reason that has made the story strike home even harder for me.

It's also very hard to blog about such things - and harder still to blog about something that seems like a side-issue in comparison, namely BBC bias. 

The corporation's coverage of the events on the day struck me (as it struck some commenters at Biased BBC) as being admirable rather than objectionable. The BBC's much-complained-about tendency to try to deflect attention away from the specifically Muslim nature of the crime  (and all the implications that flow from that) onto, say, the the failings of the police, the EDL, the security services, "Islamophobia", British foreign policy, the BNP (etc), didn't come into play much that day. 

That soon changed. 

Last night's The World Tonight was much more what I expect from the BBC. I will permit myself a grumble about this, but nothing else at this stage.

I sent Sue an e-mail moaning about the programme immediately after it was broadcast but found, the following morning, that a commenter at Biased BBC had outlined the programme's coverage at least as well as I'd done, so (with a due hat-hit) here is that comment: 

graphene fedora says:

May 25, 2013 at 6:22 am 

Radio 4, 10pm News, last night, Friday. Missed first 3 minutes, then caught a cursory mention of the Rigby family’s heartbreaking press conference. Next, Kim Howells, former New Labour Home Office/Security minister, who spoke sensibly about the overstretched security services trying to monitor thousands, thousands, of terror suspects, & how they have to make extremely difficult judgements; who is ‘peripheral’, who is a main player. Howells then went spectacularly off-message, he picked up a loose ball & smashed thru’ the BBC’s defences. He said, with increasing passion, it was really down to the muslim communities to come forward & identify the potential terrorists in their midst, & their reluctance to do so would, in time of war, render them TRAITORS. Cue nervous & hurried curtailment of the interview by panicky lady beeboid. A bit too much Old, Real, working class Labour for the refined Islington/Barnes palate.
Next, a man & a reassuring survey, telling everybody everything’s fine – no increase in animosity against muslims, besides, it’s a generational thing, 16-24s are cool about it. So that’s OK, then. Lot of young muslim men in my ‘hood who are very cool with it.
On to a purring muslim gentleman, teacher, resident of Woolwich for 40 years, muslim community, all fine, thank you, muslim community has recieved many messages from concerned Christians, muslim community, muslim community, muslim comm…
Next, a muslim man, who had been chairman of the Fabians, &….Medhi Hasan….to discuss whether the media has got the Woolwich atrocity out of perspective.
Switched off.

I also switched off at that point. 

Please take a listen for yourselves and you will see that the commenter gives a very accurate flavour of the programme. Presenter Philippa Thomas's ending of the interview with Labour's Kim Howells really did sound "nervous and panicky". This is how the closing section of that interview concluded, in response to a question from Philippa about whether government interventions might "alienate" Muslims:

Kim Howells: The people who should be stopping all this are Muslims. They are those Muslim communities who ought to have the guts to stand up and identify these people because they live in a democracy, they should abide by the rules of the democracy and by the laws of this country. If they don't do so they are effectively traitors. They are doing things which in wartime would be considered to be the acts of traitors...

Philippa Thomas (interrupting): Kim Howells...

Kim Howells: ...and they should be treated as such.

Philippa Thomas: Kim Howells, thank you very much for joining us.

That she evidently felt uncomfortable when Dr. Howells made the point that it's down to the Muslim community to tackle the extremist element in their midst and that that their failure to do so would make them traitors does, I think, speak volumes about the BBC presenter's own attitude. I'm firmly with Dr. Howells (and Simon Heffer) here. It clearly is treason....which is a discussion none of the BBC Radio 4 staples (or Newsnight) is prepared to focus on or discuss. Their failure to do so also, I think, speaks volumes about their (institutional) attitude. It denies a hearing to a strong strand of public opinion, as represented by Dr. Howells, Simon Heffer - and me. 

The man with the "reassuring survey", helping to shift the focus onto the far-Right (EDL, etc), was BBC regular Dr Matthew Goodwin. Dr Goodwin - a left-wing academic - has, as far as I can see, been all over the BBC in recent days (Newsnight on Thursday, Today this morning), highlighting the dangers of an "extreme-Right" reaction, "prejudice" and "Islamophobia". This survey, carried out by YouGov on his behalf, apparently shows that the British public hasn't become more "Islamophobic" as a result of the murder of Lee Rigby. D Goodwin's presence is what I would expect from the BBC, as is the shift of focus onto the far-Right and the possibility of a backlash. (Philippa didn't interrupt or cut him off).

Also to be expected was a reassuring Muslim voice, voicing the fears of "the community" about that backlash - and the warm feelings of other "communities" towards his own "community". (The word "community" was used ten times during this discussion). That voice was provided by Saeed Ahmad of the Greenwich Multi Faith Forum, who had been invited to a meeting with Labour leader Ed Miliband that day (Philippa told us). Philippa didn't fail to invite him to criticise the newspapers for distinguishing between "the Muslim and the other" (and he didn't fail to take up her invitation). 

I'd been rather taken aback by the line John Humphrys had been pursuing during his interview with Communities Secretary Eric Pickles that morning (here, at 1:35:30, for a few more days), which was also based on the "backlash" and "fears of the Muslim community" angle. John Humphrys's specific angle was that the story  of "a man being killed in the streets" was being got out of perspective - that "we" "over-reacted" (as he put it.) Lo and behold, next up after Mr Ahmad on last night's The World Tonight was a discussion framed, as the Biased BBC commenter said, by the very same question from Philippa Thomas: Has the reaction been "proportionate" and "appropriate"? The programme gathered together two like-minded left-wingers, Sunder Katwala of the Fabian Society and Mehdi Hasan of the UK Huffington Post. "Have we over-reacted?", Philippa asked Mehdi, further pursuing the matter in her follow-up question. Philippa then asked Sunder another variant on the same question. Neither of them, I'm relieved to say, agreed that we had over-reacted. 

It's this sort of thing that gets the BBC a reputation for being biased and pursuing certain angles.

UPDATE: Tonight's PM led with that "rise" in "Islamophobic attacks" and "questions" for the security services.

Paddy O'Connell's interview with Haris Rafiq of the counter-extremist organisation Centri was interesting. In response to Paddy's question about whether our security services have been embarrassed by the Newsnight Islamist's so-called revelations, Mr. Rafiq strongly (and convincingly) disputed the legitimacy of those allegations. Also, in response to Paddy's question about whether MI5 was alienating Muslims, Mr. Rafiq revealed something truly astonishing, which I've not heard before:

I think that, from my own personal experience, I've spoken to a number of British Muslims since the incident in Woolwich and I would say that approximately 60% of the people I've spoken to have thought, before they spoke to me, that this was a government cover-up or this was an MI5-instigated incident to have a go at Muslims. 

That's not good, is it? Really not good.

Hissing Sid and what we’re told to think

Why do we have to have our news filtered through the weirdest prism, day in day out. Is it because of this? 

I mean, this morning we were treated to the news of an increase in Islamophobic incidents. A spike, no less. No-one was beheaded in the course of announcing those incidents, nor in the incidents themselves. 

Mind you, I do understand the urge to point out such spikes, as I appreciate that antisemitic incidents are occasionally pointed out too, usually after some particularly egregious anti-Israel reportage.

You can always tell when the announcer is taking care not to sound Islamophobic by the way he pronounces the words Mussslim and Isslam; like hissing Sid.  A variation on announcers going native over the pronunciation of certain place names, perhaps. 

Quite odd, and it puts one in mind of the comedic Arabic accent that George Galloway puts on when addressing a certain audience. He must do to ingratiate himself with them. I vunder eef it verks? Pwobbibly not.

Another odd bit of news, delivered with palpable sanctimony, and puffed up into an actual  headline, was the fact that one of the Michaels, Adebolajo, had been unsuccessfully approached as a potential recruit (intelligence?) by MI5. And that, apparently, solely upon the say-so of one decidedly shifty-eyed individual who had somehow managed to get himself invited onto Newsnight to expound the theory of reasoned action the prediction of behavioral intention predictions of attitude and behavior and radicalisation in relation to the formula BI=(AB)W1+(SN)W2 in spite of an obvious difficulty with the meanings of words other than ‘basically’  - and was subsequently arrested, on BBC premises, on alleged terrorism related charges.

So? What are we supposed to  think? Do tell us, BBC. What, exactly, is the insinuation you are making? The incompetence of the security services? The mendacity of the security services? What? 

Or is it that you are trying to infer that MI5 should have preempted the incident, while you simultaneously rail against a smidgeon of a hint at any curtailment of our freedom and human rights?

We may feel sorry that ‘unspeakable’ things had been done to Mr. Adebolajo, but surely we weren’t being told this in mitigation, were we? 

You cautiously refer to the two Michaels as ‘suspects’. “The two people suspected of killing Lee Rigby.” Is that a legal requirement, potentially prejudicial to a presumed trial going forward? Because  in view of the fact that they were caught, by the whole wide world - and one can legitimately apply the word ‘literally’ at long last - red-handed,  it appears completely ludicrous.

The person suspected of being Nick Robinson, if that’s the latest BBC sub judicial edict, had to apologise for inadvertently saying the ‘suspects’ looked a bit you-know-what-ish.  

You subject us to the wisdom of a number of antisemitic, homophobic, misogynistic advocates of Sharia, whose racism you ignore in the scramble to avoid seeming racist yourselves, notably probably the most David Brent-like Muslim in the UK Caliphate whose unconscious humour one might adore, but whose opinion on this or any other incident one could do without.

We’re subjected to the desperate attempts to create moral equivalence between the shouty screamy EDL and their cleaver-wielding antagonists, or have the EDL carried out any terrorist attacks you’ve omitted to tell us about? 

Probing the significance of everything said, done or excreted by the Muslim Community is terminally irritating to many listeners, though you might not realise that. It might even have the counterproductive effect that no-one is allowed to openly hope for.

True Colours

Why can’t David Cameron and Boris and the BBC believe what “the Moslems” are telling them? Choudary and Co. are open and honest. Transparency is what we like, no? 

The obvious answer is before our very eyes, but due to circumstances beyond our control we can’t admit it. There are so many Muslim and right-on voters in this country, and understandably, no-one dares to risk rocking the boat.

Okay, so violence and barbarity are nothing to do with Islam, eh? Says who? Moderate Muslims, who insist that violent Jihad is a perversion of the real Islam? 

Why should anyone actually believe a goody-goody fantasy, rather than honest Anjem when the evidence is there for all to see. Kindly look at Egypt, Tunisia, Syria, blah blah bloody blah, and ‘Palestine’, everyone’s oh so precious cover-up for their embarrassing antisemitism.  

A courageous Muslim poses the question - why is it that Muslims can be, philosophically, as radical as you like, but unless and until they resort to violence in deed or or plot, they’re considered to be moderate.

In every other aspect of our society, an ‘extremist’ is defined by both their actions and their personally held views; it is perfectly reasonable to label a racist a ‘racist’, whether or not they carry out illegal acts or promote law-breaking. For some reason, however, such rational logic isn’t generally applied when it comes to describing members of religious groups.It seems that any Muslim who states that they support obeying the laws of the land is defined by default as ‘moderate’ without regard to whether he or she might hold some views that are very extreme and unpleasant indeed. However, a large section of our media and institutions appear to only label a Muslim as an ‘extremist’ if he or she breaks the law or incites others to do so. This is illogical and irrational.

The verbally incontinent Asghar Bukhari of MPACUK, whose verbosity is no match for his stupidity, has been on our screens day and night since the incident. He simply has to chant “Though Moslems abhor this act, it was because of the government’s foreign policy” and his interlocutors are virtually pole-axed, reduced to stuttering stupefaction.   Stunned into submission by what they dumbly accept is a legitimate grievance. Dumbfounded! By what? Bamboozled by a trumped-up, illogical, patently ridiculous  “greevy-ance.”

To his credit Clive Myrie attempted to challenge this meaningless, baseles, blatantly illogical, manifestly false mantra.  “We’re trying to make things better for the Afghanis” protests Myrie. But Bukhri’s having none of that. He doesn’t want our ‘better’. He wants Sharia. He wants poverty, misogyny, repression and female genital mutilation. You know, the true Islam. That’s the ‘better’ he wants.

Followers of Islam, the true version, the false version, the perverted version, the version that doubles-up as a hostess trolley, all oppose “our” side -  that is Western armed forces - trespassing on Muslim land, “killing Moslems.” That’s the chant that’s universally repeated by  practicing, radical, fanatical, ghettoised, integrated, built-in or free-standing, moderate Muslims everywhere.

So I’m waiting for them to explain. Which Muslims mustn’t we kill? The Taliban? Saddam Hussain? The Sunnis? Shia? Boko Haram, Al-Shabaab? Do tell, Mr. Bukhri old chap, which particular Muslims are the ones that are reserved solely for other Muslims to kill?

Or is it just that Muslims are a homogeneous group when it suits the case for the prosecution, and the good v bad, moderate v extreme, mustn’t-be-tarred-with-the-same brush, don’t-associate-us-with-terrorism, hard-done-by, epitome of diversity when it happens to suit the case for the defence. So why are we going through this charade?

 Certainly, Muslims are quite right to fear the backlash. If they don’t want a backlash, they must denounce a whole lot more than just the one gruesome act.

 Aftermaths are like that. After Brievik’s atrocity the finger was pointed at the “the right-wing” as a whole. Very few qualms about that were to be heard from the  Guardian-reading ‘we are all Hezbollah now” brigade. 

Whenever Islamic inspired terrorism rears its head, mixed with the horror there’s an undeniable sense of vindication. Relief that the violence is motivated by Islam and not an unhinged rogue representative of one’s own kith and kin.

Anjem Choudary has really put the wind up everyone. Muslims and non-Muslims alike are saying he should be in prison for radicalising others. 

Banged up for telling the truth? Anjem believes in telling it like it is. He doesn’t bother condemning the beheading of Lee Rigby, settling instead for an oblique reference to obeying the law of the land. 

Other muslims think it’s sufficient to condemn this particular barbaric act, while still harbouring their precious greevy-ance. They advocate exerting their influence over our foreign policy by democratic means, and in polls, surveys, interviews, undercover and open-plan reporting, they come out with stuff that makes a mockery out of David “This was nothing to do with Islam” Cameron’s politically correct, factually incorrect assertion.

Anjem Choudary is a true colours kinda guy. We know where we are with him. Like Bukhari and other grievance-burdened Islamists who pay televised lip service to their disapproval of the ambush and murder of Lee Rigby, Choudary also wants Sharia; chauvinism, misogyny, repression and, who knows, female genital mutilation; the true Islam. He doesn’t just want it in Afghanistan or Iraq. He was born here, and he wants it here.

Cynicism - Too Little Too Late

The BBC has produced a comparatively even-handed piece on the latest chapter in the Al Durah saga. 

From the extreme anti-Israel website Mondoweiss, which quotes a typically ‘self-hating’ article in Haaretz that describes the latest Israeli report on the incident as “surreal”, to Honest Reporting’s article, which reproduces the report in full, the BBC emerges somewhere in the middle. Apart, perhaps, from the misleading first paragraph which says “An Israeli investigation has said a French news report in 2000 which blamed Israeli troops for shooting dead a Palestinian child was baseless” which slightly misrepresents what the report actually said [of claims made and beamed around the world,] “there was no basis in the material which the station had in its possession at the time of the report”

Subtle difference, true, but the BBC’s version sounds almost scathing. One predictable, but unfortunate take on this at the time of writing is that releasing this report cannot do Israel any good, and most likely will do harm. 

One reason given is the long time lapse - sleeping dogs and all that - and another seems to be that such a meticulous document, which allegedly contains no new material, says more about the personal obsession of the chairman of the committee Yossi Kuperwasser than about any genuine quest for the truth, and that the report itself will prove to be too detailed and intricate for most people to bother engaging with. 

Haaretz suggests that there is an element of revenge against Charles Enderlin, in the vague hope of making him take responsibility for the many acts of terror carried out by assorted Islamist thugs over the years in the name of Mohammad Al Dura.

Even more disappointing, a report in the Telegraph by Robert Tait seems to have created a cynical aura around Israel’s case. In the tree version, below the Headline “Israel and the ‘blood libel’ of the intifada” is the  strap-line: “Netanyahu government provokes outrage with report claiming that defining image of Palestinian uprising may have been a propaganda fake.” 

Online, this has changed. The headline “Symbolic intifada death of boy did not happen, says Israel” is followed by: “A 12-year-old boy caught up in a notorious gunfight between Israel's forces and Palestinian militants during the 2000 intifada may not have died in the event and was not hit by Israeli fire, a government inquiry has claimed.”

It was the tree version that caught my eye because the focus on the outrage that the report is allegedly provoking seems odd. Do these people care so little for the substance of the report that the feathers it might ruffle take priority over forensic analysis of the incident?

Apparently so. I suspect Robert Tait is a Haaretz reader, and dare it be said, a bit of a churnalist.  

Who could disagree with, or be provoked by this:

 “There is a particular need for international media outlets to critically evaluate information provided by local stringers, especially in arenas in which repeated attempts to stage or fabricate media items have been documented.”

Or this:

“France 2 should have retracted or qualified the unequivocal claims of itsreporter that the boy was the target of Israeli fire and died in the sequence shown,apologized for misleadingly editing the footage, and clarified that it reliedunquestioningly on its Gaza stringer in formulating the report.

 Having followed the incident from the time Philippe Karsenty’s original court case was first reported, and through the various legal and political developments to the present day, I find the incident worthy of more than the cynical coverage it’s getting now, when the correct time for cynicism was when the film was originally beamed round the world to such devastating effect.     

A Problem like Sharia.

The following is a belated review, which I mothballed for some reason, but in the light of today’s news “The police watchdog the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) has published a second highly critical report on the failures by Essex police to protect Ms Stubbings and her son” I’m resurrecting it.

By the time Jane Corbin’s Panorama programme about Sharia was aired we’d already seen the most sensational snippet of footage in the programme because it had been trailed, several times, during the preceding week. In it, an aged bearded Muslim elder, a sort of Islamic marriage councillor, advised an undercover reporter posing as a battered wife that unless there were visible bruises, she must keep her fictitious husband’s domestic violence to herself, rather than report it to the police.

Jane Corbin found this extremely shocking in the puffed-up way the BBC has of being shocked - shocked - whenever they’ve decided it’s about  time they showed the public something shocking, in order to make us all marvel at Panorama’s cutting edge.

On reflection, it seemed pretty understandable that the bearded Muslim cleric wished to keep it in the family, because he knows, as do you and I, that once the police get hold of something like that theres‘s no turning back.

   

One day the BBC might discover that police and the social services treat family matters in an insensitive, ham-fisted manner, and perhaps they will be shocked - shocked,  and decide it’s time to make an equally groundbreaking programme about that. 

The editorial whimsy that governs choice of material to be subjected to the BBC’s eagle-eyed gaze is a mystery, but that time the spotlight was directed at Sharia. The beam alighted upon the profound disservice Britain’s Islamic councils do to Muslim women. This topic was long overdue, which perhaps took much of the edge off the shock.

   

Jane Corbin has an erratic CV when it comes to Panoramas. One minute she’s taking a walk in the park in Jerusalem, saying all kinds of disparaging things about Israel, next she’s investigating the Mavi Marmara and actually supporting the Israeli version of the event, and doing so against the extremely hostile prevailing wind that’s constantly blowing in from the BBC and surrounding media. She’s showing footage of the incident instead of outrageous fantasies that pro-Palestinian activists are inexplicably able to wangle onto BBC news programmes disguised as factual reportage.

Those who are always careful to distance themselves from the EDL, Geert Wilders or anything Islamophobic while simultaneously - if half-heartedly - espousing many of their sentiments, inevitably tie themselves into knots. If you’re not a fan of Shari’a and you recognise the danger of an effectively unregulated parallel legal system, and if you accept that this was a legitimate subject for the BBC to tackle, but nevertheless found the programme unsatisfactory, you might want to ask yourself whether it was perhaps Islamophobic. But if you were honest, you’d have to concede that the flaws in the programme lay elsewhere.

The problem was that the subject deserved a deep and fundamental scrutiny rather than the superficial shortcut on offer. Furthermore, it was unnecessarily sensationalised by using a modus operandi plagiarized from channel 4‘s Undercover Mosque, with a provocative honey-trap style deception grafted on. Jane Corbin took the easy route, cheating viewers by depriving us of the grown-up programme we deserve, one that takes a wider look at the  situation with the common sense perspective the BBC is supposed to take.  

The folly of the implication that ‘going to the the police’ or ‘not going to the police’ was the crux of the matter and a kind of cure-all for domestic violence was brought home, so to speak, with the news surrounding the police’s mishandling of the case of Maria Stubbings who was murdered by her violent partner despite unequivocal warning signs. 

Must we always reach the point of no return before we dare admit we might have been wrong?

Whitewashing Sex Gangs III

Mary Hockaday

This week's Newswatch with Samira Ahmed discussed the BBC's coverage of the Oxford street grooming case. In the course of the programme Samira interviewed the head of the BBC newsroom, Mary Hockaday. 

The section began with an extract from last Tuesday's Six O'Clock News on BBC One:

Newsreader: The court heard how the girls were plied with alcohol and drugs before being abused. The men will be sentenced next month. Just to warn you, Tom Symond's report contains disturbing details of the gang's activities.

Reporter: The men behind one of the most serious cases in recent years of what's become known as "street grooming. Their victims vulnerable young teenage girls in Oxford.

The majority of Newswatch correspondents complained that the Muslim or "Asian" element was being "underplayed". Three such complaints were read out.

- "Your report tonight went to bizarrely contrived efforts to disguise the obvious sectarian element involved ie gangs of Muslim men grooming and raping girls drawn from indigenous non-Muslim groups."

- "This huge story is being slanted quite outrageously by BBC News. This is racially organised targeting of sexual violence on minors, and is far from an isolated case. You are deliberately ignoring that and being racist is your partiality."

- "Why do you never mention the religion of those mentioned in sexual abuse cases? We all know they are predominantly Muslim." 

The part of the interview with Mary Hockaday which dealt with this matter is worth transcribing (before Newswatch vanishes from the i-Player), especially in the light of our earlier posts on this issue - and the comments of Dr. Taj Hargey:

Samira Ahmed: The six o'clock lead story, which we showed a clip of at the beginning there...no mention of ethnicity or religion until the end of the second background package, eight minutes in; in fact no mention at all of the fact they were Muslim. Why?

Mary Hockaday: This was reporting of a court case and, primarily, the task was to report the findings, the verdicts and what had happened, and for much of our reporting and our court reporting we were conveying the details and the information of what had emerged through the trial and then particularly on that day. Part of it is, as you say, in our reporting with Alison Holt, we did come to the issue of the ethnicity of the defendants...

Samira Ahmed (interrupting): It was mentioned very, very briefly, right at the very end. I mean, there have been five similar cases now - Shropshire, Rochdale, Rotherham, Oldham and Derby as well...there's a great blog-post by Mark Easton about it on the BBC website...The charge is that the BBC seemed to be more worried about offending Pakistani Muslims that it did about covering all the issues - and it was relevant to the case.  

Mary Hockaday: Yes, I can absolutely assure you that was not our particular concern on that day. We certainly do not attempt to slant our coverage and we certainly don't ignore any aspects of the case. What we're trying to do is report it in the round, and actually during the court case the word used usually by the police was "Asian". We undertook to make our own further enquiries so that we were sure about the more detailed ethnicity of the defendants and that is something - many of Pakistan heritage, some of North African - that we included in our reporting through the day on the channel. We discuss all stories, both about the accuracy, the weight, the issues arisen, and in these cases very much about the language used....

Samira Ahmed (interrupting): But on this, were reporters told "Don't use the word 'Muslim' or don't say they're Asian up front. I mean...

Mary Hockaday: We don't tell our reporters. We don't give them a sort of rule book for language. We are asking them to report accurately. If you look at the reporting as a whole, both on the Six O'Clock News then on all the other outlets, these are not issues that we shied away from. I mean, as you say...

Samira Ahmed (interrupting): But on the Six O'Clock News you did. 

Mary Hockaday: ...Mark Easton in his blog and also on air, Alison Holt, in many of the guests in discussions, the issues you've touched on, but also others - the questions for the police, for the social services, the broader question I think for all of us that we see reflected in the very many different kinds of child abuse and exploitation cases that we found ourselves reporting on, about how this society does or doesn't listen to children.

That was an instance of fine interviewing by Samira. 

It has to be said, however, that the edition of the Six O'Clock News under discussion does sound to have downplayed the sectarian element in the story. The evidence provided by Samira makes that plain and little that Mary Hockaday said in response really countered that charge. She was also rather evasive about the "Muslim question".

I did also raise an eyebrow at Mary's contention that "We don't tell our reporters. We don't give them a sort of rule book for language" as I was under the impression that certain words were specifically discouraged under the corporation's Editorial Guidelines - "terrorist", for instance - and that, say for their Israel-Palestinian coverage, they has long existing what could be described as "a sort of rule book for language". 

Was the Six O'Clock News an exception? 

Carolyn Quinn

It might be instructive to check out how that evening's P.M. on Radio 4 one hour earlier dealt with the story. 

Although both of the introductions provided by Carolyn Quinn (to the whole programme and to Mike Sargeant's report) shied away from any mention of matter racial or religious, the coverage did twice mention the Pakistani and North African ethnicity of the abusers (in passing), though Mike Sergeant didn't mention the ethnicity of their victims anywhere in his report; indeed, his report stayed away from any ethnic or Muslim angle until, towards the end, he suddenly said that there are "questions for the Muslim community". He didn't spell out what those questions were though, and then featured an Oxford imam saying that enough's enough, that the community should tackle the issue and it shouldn't be swept under the carpet. Listeners unfamiliar with the story might have been left wondering why the imam was saying that. The following interview between Carolyn and Natasha Finlayson of the Who Cares Trust avoided such issues altogether. 

So, unlike the Six O'Clock News, the "Muslim" issue was raised on P.M., albeit very briefly and with no context being give for the benefit of Radio 4 listeners. The angle, therefore, wasn't ignored but it clearly was downplayed. 

By the time of that night's The World Tonight the main news bulletin was informing listeners of the Pakistani and North African ethnicity of the abusers and that "the girls were white". The failure of the authorities to look out for vulnerable girls was one of the two main angles, with the county council's role coming in for the strongest questioning but presenter David Eades then laid out the other - albeit using the "Asian" word that infuriates so many, including many non-Muslim Asians:

The inescapable truths of this case are twofold: That again the authorities failed to protect vulnerable girls and again that a gang overwhelmingly of Asian men were found guilty of appalling abuse of white girls. The echoes of Rochdale and Rotherham are clear. It's also clear the local Asian community in the Oxford area fear the impact all this could have on them. The Asian Network's Catrin Nye has been there to gauge their views.

Catrin Nye

Catrin's report on the Pakistani community emphasised how "tight knit" the community is. Everyone knew the perpetrators. She talks to one young man and asks him what impact this might have. He says people with daughters might start thinking all young Asian men are paedos, which is wrong, because it's a small minority that have done something wrong. Every race and creed is doing it, he says.  Other man says much the same.  It's every race and creed. The view is expressed that a flash, gangster element has come in and preyed on the girls just because they are vulnerable. Another expresses caution about talking about the issue, says they should stick together and repeats much the same 'everyone's doing it' line as the previous vox pops. It's every race and creed. Two others say it's nothing to do with their religion after Catrin asks them what they make of the charge that Muslim men disrespect non-Muslim women. She says they are all concerned about a backlash as a result of this case. 

A very clear message was conveyed by that report: Every race and creed is doing it. 

David Eades then continued, persisting with his "Asian" formulation - which he never deviated from:

As with the other well-documented cases, the crimes in Oxford do provoke argument as to how much focus should be placed on that Asian connection. I spoke to Yasmin Qureshi, Labour MP for Bolton South. She's a lawyer and Asian, and I asked her whether it's inevitable that young Asian men, like the ones we've just heard from, would feel tarnished by this case?

Yasmin Qureshi said, yes, she understood. It's like how young Afro-Caribbean men were stereotyped years ago, she claimed. The Pakistani origin of many of the abusers in these cases shouldn't mean they aren't investigated, she continued, but as "I know of" "one defendant" in "one case" who raped his own daughter, so "it can't be to do with culture or religion" [Yes, she really did say that!!!] 

So, do you think dwelling on the Pakistani ethnicity of the perps and the white ethnicity of the girls is "out of order?", asked David Eades. "I think that is not right and it is not helpful in the debate," she replied, before going on to attack media reporting. This is about opportunity and vulnerability, she claimed. 

David Eades pointed to people who say, yes, but it keeps happening, meaning there's "a trend" - to which the Labour MP responded that the victims in these cases "just happen to be young girls" [yes, she really did phrase it like that], they're from broken homes, in care, vulnerable, young, alone, lost. The men pick on them for their vulnerability. 

Yasmin Qureshi, MP

But, David persisted, "these are organised groups from the same ethnic background". Only because "they happen to socialise with each other, because they happen to know each other", Yasmin replied.

Well, you can't say that the issue of ethnicity wasn't aired by The World Tonight. The issue of Islam, however, was downplayed again - especially by the programme's presenter. The choice of speakers with regards to this aspect of the story, however, was biased entirely in favour of those defending the "Asian" community against the charges we often hear, including from other "Asian" spokespeople such as Taj Hargey and Mohammed Shafiq. 

Whitewashing sex gangs? There certainly seems to have been an element of that, doesn't there? - at least in these three BBC programmes from Tuesday 14th May. It could have been worse though. At least The World Tonight showed that the BBC was venturing a little bit further than it might once have done. 

Pieless in Gaza, at the stove with Yolande

Hadar at CiF Watch posted a piece about an article from the Guardian's Harriet Sherwood which plugged a book about gastronomy in Gaza by Laila el-Haddad and Maggie Schmitt called The Gaza Kitchen. Laila el-Haddad, a CiF contributor in the past, is no mere cook book writer; she's also a Palestinian activist who advocates a 'one-state' solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict - i.e. the dissolution of the State of Israel - and whose book doesn't steer away from a (loaded) take on the political context. 

Inevitably, the BBC also plugged the same book. Monday night's P.M. featured a report about it, but that edition of the programme has (for some reason) never been available to re-listen to since its broadcast (which is very unusual for editions of P.M.)

Still, the very same report, by Yolande Knell, can still be heard, via the World Service's listen-again function. You can hear it here (beginning 18 minutes in).

My summary of the report:
A woman in a "refugee camp" takes pride in her Gazan recipes. 
As most of the population of Gaza are  the descendants of "refugees" from "historic Palestine", they have brought in many influences. 
The book is duly plugged and the co-author Laila el-Haddad is interviewed. 
Gas shortages in Gaza. 
Israel's blockade. Its effect? "Most exports are still banned. That's hit industry hard and kept unemployment and poverty high." 
An economist, Omar Shaban, talks of that poverty and the fall in the quality of food Gazans can eat. It's not like it "was before", he keeps saying, sadly.
Still, there's "a generous spread" at the woman's "cramped" home. 
Gazans are so "inventive" and "exuberant" and, says Yolande, ending her report, "and they have plenty of tasty offerings that should appeal to Western appetites."

Nothing BDS-like about that appeal from the BBC's Yolande Knell to her Western listeners: Buy Gazan food! - and buy this book!

Has any book about Israel's gastronomical delights been plugged by the BBC recently? Have the exuberant cooks of Israel been presented in such glowing terms by either Yolande or her many colleagues in the Middle East? Or is Israel only fit to be the bad guy in sob stories about plucky Palestinians?

Whitewashing Sex Gangs (II)

Following on from Sue's Whitewashing Sex Gangs post, the closing section of Radio 4's Sunday dealt (as Sue pointed out) with the same highly controversial issue of child grooming by Muslim gangs in the wake of the Oxford abuse trial, where several men with backgrounds in several Muslim countries (not just Pakistan) used and abused a number of under-aged white girls in the most degrading and cruel ways imaginable.

For a programme that has exhaustively pursued the Roman Catholic Church over the particular issue of clerical child abuse in recent years, this is a subject the programme needed to tackle. There is a perception among some viewers and listeners that the BBC treads far too gingerly around this issue. Sunday has not exactly ignored it over the past few years, though it had dealt with the issue far less frequently than it has dealt with the issue of abuse by Catholics. You can read the detailed evidence for this contention here - a complete survey of 93 editions of the programme in 2011 and 2012 which found that the issue of Muslim paedophile gangs, child abuse by imams and within Islamic institutions and other such matters was discussed on just three editions (3.2%), as compared to the 26 editions (28%) featuring discussion of Catholic clerical abuse.

Many people believe there's a link between the teachings of Islam and this specific form of child abuse against non-Muslim girls, however hotly denied this may be by the police or the Children's Commission. 

As Sue said, this edition of Sunday closed with a debate between Sheikh Ibrahim Mogra of the Muslim Council of Britain and Dr. Taj Hargey, imam of the Oxford Islamic Congregation. Like Sue, I found Dr. Hargey's contribution magnificent -  "Good man!" was my (somewhat old-fashioned) exclamation on hearing him - and Sheikh Mogra's disgraceful attempts to undo the damage turned out to be a complete disaster (for him). Dr. Hargey won, all hands down. Sheikh Mogra sounded like a creep.

This was partly down to Edward Stourton's evident surprise at and refusal to accept Sheikh Mogra's feeble and blindingly obvious attempts to slip and slide in order to evade the point of Dr. Hargey's comments. "Good man, Ed!", I thought (stroking my whiskers, and sipping on my breakfast pint of port). 

Here is a transcription of that discussion, I hope you find it as interesting as I do.

Ed: Dr. Hargey, in what sense do you think the religious background of men in a case like this predisposes them to commit this kind of crime?

Dr. Hargey: Well, it's the mood music from the mosques and the madrassas, the drip-drip effect over many decades that says that women of another culture and another race, especially British women who are immodestly dressed and who are, therefore, impure and immoral, and they are fair game. They don't say that directly, but I think that they have juxtaposed that Muslim women wear the hijab, the niqab, the headscarf and the face mask and, of course, our women are better; other women, by an unspoken subtext, not so good. And I think this is what we need to address. I think we cannot bury our heads in the sand and say this is not an issue that effects the Muslim community. It does. Most of the perpetrators - whether Rochdale, Telford, or Derby, or wherever - are Muslim men and whether they are Pakistani, it doesn't really matter. What is important is that they are Muslim. So where do they get this idea about women? Where does this misogyny about women and patriarchy come from? 

Ed: Your answer to that question is very clear. It comes from the mosques?

Dr. Hargey: Not just from them, but from the madrassas, from the community. It's pervasive. I mean, just to blame the mosques would be unfair, but I think we need to examine Islamic theology and especially certain fatwas and so forth that denigrate women, that patronises them, that regards them as chattels, as possessions; for example, Saudi Arabia, looked upon as the so-called leader of the Islamic community, they don't even allow the women to travel unaccompanied by male relatives. So we have a whole mindset that needs to be combated. I think that what we are trying to do is to solve the problem at the end of the production line. It's never going to work. We need to go to the beginning of the production line and see how women and men...how women are objectified in Muslim society.

Ed: Sheikh Ibrahim Mogra, two very clear points: The first being that that's the message that comes through in all sorts of ways in the Muslim community; and the second that that's directly related to this kind of case. What's your response to those two...?

Sheikh Mogra: I totally disagree with most of the assessments and analysis of Dr. Hargey there. The mosques and the madrassas would be the last place where encouragement would be taught for sexual misbehaviour...

Ed (interrupting): That's not what he's saying though. He's saying that a view of women comes across that leads to that.

Sheikh Mogra

Sheikh Mogra: The teachings of Islam and the theology of Islam is very, very clear. Sexual relations can only be between a male and a female who are married to one another. The fatwas that are issued are very, very clear about that and this idea of suggesting that a distant country is influencing us here, how our youngsters have behaved on the street is absolutely...something very difficult to connect with this issue. When the specific example of women not being allowed to travel alone..I'm just thinking if these young girls, who have been exploited and have been pounced upon, had been accompanied by a male then they would have  been safer. But let's not go into the situation of distant countries. For me the issue here really is 'What can we do now to ensure that this menace is eradicated from our societies and from our communities.

Ed: But, forgive me, you didn't quite address the point - or at least I didn't think you did - which was not to do with the teaching on sexual relations in Islam, it was to do with the attitude to women that comes across in all sorts of different ways.

Sheikh Mogra: Well, let me share with you what Islam teaches about the attitudes that Muslims should have towards women. Their is very, very categoric teachings within the Koran and within the Kadith traditions that the woman is to be honoured, is to be given respect and dignity. We cannot allow cultural practices to be packaged as if they were Islamic teachings. They is Islam, and the teachings of Islam, which is very clear and there is the cultural behaviour which is be condemned because it is does not fit with the teachings of Islam. 

Ed: Let me bring in Dr. Hargey there. Your response to that?

Dr. Hargey: Yes, we due respect, what the sheikh is talking about is about Muslim attitudes towards Muslim women, not to non-Muslim women. This is the issue....

Sheikh Mogra (interrupting): Absolutely not!...

Ed: Just a second, Sheikh Mogra, please, Sheikh Mogra, do forgive me, Let Dr. Hargey finish.

Dr. Hargey: And for the sheikh to talk about Saudi Arabia as some distant country is very disingenuous. Thi is the country that brings a Wahhabi type of Islam right to our shores. so we can't just dismiss that. But the issue here is really how Muslim society, whether it is the imams, whether it is the mosques and madrassas or elders, whatever, how they view women of the other - the other meaning 'the kaffir women' - OK, the kaffir women, the non-believing women...

Ed (interrupting): ...the kaffir women are the non-believers?

Dr. Hargey: Yes, the non-believing women are fair game, they are easy meat...

Sheikh Mogra (interrupting): Absolutely not! Absolutely not!

Ed: Sheikh Mogra, I'll come back to you in a moment.

Dr. Hargey: ...because they are are not fit, because the way they dress they are inviting this kind of thing in their mindset...

Taj Hargey

Ed (interrupting): All right, let...Sheikh Mogra, you've told us how things should be but Dr. Hargey is presenting us with a picture of how he thinks thinks actually are.

Sheikh Mogra: That is not true. Muslims have been living in this country for six, seven decades or more and  

non-Muslim women have been dressing in the way that they have been dressing for all that time. So this is not an issue of Muslim men looking at non-Muslim women and the way that they are dressing to say they are fair game. The law is the law. You can not have any relations, you can not... 

Dr. Hargey (interrupting): So why...

Ed (interrupting): Just a second! 

Sheikh Mogra: There is no space and room in the teachings of Islam where Muslims have got license to abuse other non-Muslim women just because of the way they dress, the way they live, or whatever their lifestyles are. The bottom line here is that we have an issue in our country where young women are being abused, just because...

Ed (interrupting): Forgive me, we're running out of time. I just want a quick response to that from Dr. Hargey.

Dr. Hargey: So why is it that all the victims are non-Muslim white women, young girls? There isn't a single Muslim girl that's been groomed and abused by a Muslim gang. So clearly there's an issue of race, religion, culture, whatever, and we should stop burying our heads in the sand and talk about the wonderful hadith and talk about what Islam says, because the reality is very different on the street.

Ed: Forgive me, I'm going to have to end it there. It's fascinating stuff. Thank you both very much indeed for coming in to talk to us this morning.

....and thank you Ed for hosting it!

Spies and Lies

When they call upon the expertise of someone like Abdel Bari Atwan or Ghastly Karma of Exeter Islamic university, the BBC ought to issue a warning, out of consideration for the unwary listener if such an individual still remains. It’s  a matter of public service and good will. Just a little health warning, like on cigarette packaging, or at the very least, a plain wrapper. Just, please don’t introduce them with the sycophantic classification “expert on, for example, the Middle East”. Please.

As Craig mentioned earlier, and while we’re still talking of conspiracy theories, Saturday’s Today programme called in a guest expert named Annie Machon who cries out for a label.

 “I’m a former spy!” She might (or might not) cry. Or perhaps: “A Truther who believes Zionists were behind 9/11” But no. She was introduced by John Humphrys as a former MI5 officer and author of a book ”Spies, lies and whistleblowers”, which I won’t advertise again.

She was invited to opine knowledgeably upon the poisoning of former KGB spy Alexander Litvinenko, and got audibly excited on the subject of gaggings, stiflings of information, secret deals, the shortcomings of the intelligence services and the government, with a small grievance about human rights abuses thrown in for good measure. 

She sounded knowledgeable indeed -  plausible even, that is until you take the trouble to ferret out her erratic and bizarre past. 

She’s a truther and conspiracy theorist, obsessed with ‘false flag’ operations, and to top it off, she’s considerably economical with the actualité.

 Being introduced as an expert on spies and lies is okay as far as it goes, but it doesn’t give a clear picture. Fortunately Youtube has a plethora of clips that fill in the gaps. 

Apart from her punctiliously precise enunciation - so provocative you can’t help wanting to smack her in the chops, Ms. Machon bears an uncanny similarity to Mary Beard. Well, in a hidden dimensional back-to-the-future kind of way.

Machon’s fame came about because of her relationship with her former colleague and partner, the notorious whistleblower David Shayler. The gruesome twosome agreed that Zionists were responsible for 9/11, but he alone later announced that he was the Messiah,  which might give some indication as to his mental condition.

Perhaps that’s why she didn’t boast about their former relationship when mentioning him on the Today programme. 

In one clip she can be seen insisting she was an intelligence officer, not a spy; on another she proudly boasts “I started out as a spy”, all the better to impress the audience who had come to listen to the Professor of Conspiracy Theories whose  lecture she was introducing, entitled “9/11 Time For a Second Look”, David Ray Griffin.

Bravo Prof! Your preamble is fascinating and most persuasive. It goes something like this:

“People who decided long ago that the attack happened essentially the way the Bush Cheney administration said it happened, and decided that the truth movement are all crazy conspiracy theorists with no capacity to evaluate these theories objectively must take another look. 

Most of them, and most journalists, have been impervious to counter-arguments, and simply roll their eyes. Available evidence means it’s no longer rational to reject these moves out of hand without taking a second look. 

If you too roll your eyes you are guilty of the same irrationality of which you accuse us.”

That “Time for a second look” argument, that “don’t dismiss us with those rolling eyes” plea 

 holds good for supporters of other unpopular causes too, my good friend, as well as apologists for Islam like you and Annie Machon who are too blind to see that that is all you are. False-flag operations are but a gnat on the arse of the elephant, which represents the creeping Islamisation of the whole wide world. If you watched yesterday’s Unreported World on Channel four, which was about a women’s driving school in Bangladesh, you would have noticed a terrifying lock-down whereby a mob of Islamist thugs were given freedom of the streets to “protest”; a roaring, baying mass, against what? Against bleeding well everything - whilst everyone else cowered in terror.

Look at  Iraq, Iran, Gaza, Egypt, much of Africa, Pakistan and Syria - and eat your heart out. (Sorry) 

Not to mention Rochdale, Oxford, and all the rest of the UK problem areas where blind eyes are turned more often than they’re rolled.

Whilst Annie Machon is presented in a plain, unlabeled wrapper and given air time to bleat about false flag operations and breaches of human rights the BBC and most of the press is fretting about a mysterious reference to swivel-eyed loons. They wouldn’t know a swivel-eyed loon if they caught one opining on the Today programme.

Craig: Well, Sue, as we both know, Hadar at BBC Watch is fond of quoting clause 4.4.14 of the BBC Editorial Guidelines on impartiality whenever the BBC fails to honour it. I think we can follow suit here:

We should not automatically assume that contributors from other organisations (such as academics, journalists, researchers and representatives of charities) are unbiased and we may need to make it clear to the audience when contributors are associated with a particular viewpoint, if it is not apparent from their contribution or from the context in which their contribution is made.