If you had the misfortune of only reading mainstream media, you might be under the impression that racist bigots putting up flags across the country have mysterious and complex reasons for doing so. Instead of just, you know, being racist bigots who want to intimidate Black and Brown people.
Over in the corporate media world, the Guardian published an article with the headline:
‘A mini Battle of Cable Street’: the English neighbourhoods still grappling with the meaning of the flags
That’s a problem. It’s a problem because we’re not “grappling with the meaning of flags“. Everybody knows what they’re about.
It’s racism. It isn’t some big mystery. It’s just perfectly ordinary, common-or-garden British racism. And the UK’s mainstream media is driving it.
In the Guardian article, it calls the ongoing battle over the fucking flags a “controversy”. It quotes the ‘Raise the Colours’ flaggers calling their actions “positive and inclusive”. Then, in typical Guardian fashion, it lists the flaggers doxxing, harassing, and beating people blue when they try to take down the flags. All the while, it maintains the same neutral tone:
One Norwich man, Ian, 68, said he was assaulted last month while attempting to remove a flag from a lamp-post in the early hours of the morning. After he was spotted from inside a house, he said, a car pulled up, he was surrounded and had his face smashed into the pavement. He believes someone stamped on his head.
To be clear: calling this a “roiling dispute over local identity” is a choice. This is not a ‘both sides are bad’ situation. The Guardian is choosing to maintain its ‘neutral’ tone whilst describing the flaggers intimidating and beating people, whilst the anti-flaggers are… taking flags down.
It was willing to call the flags “symbols of prejudice” in an opinion piece. But for a news piece, we’re back to this ‘both sides’ bullshit.
GB News
Meanwhile, across the aisle the right-wing GB News has been forced to pay out “substantial” damages and apologise to the charity Islamic Relief. The channel uncritically platformed a political analyst, Amjad Taha, while he stated that Islamic Relief:
has been banned in countries overseas because an investigation showed it had sent money to some terrorist groups in the Middle East.
This was completely false. An Islamic Relief Worldwide spokesperson said:
We are pleased that this legal case has come to a satisfactory conclusion with a broadcasted apology and now this statement in open court. Over the past year, there has been an uptick in the promotion of unfounded and false allegations against our organisation. Earlier this year the Daily Mail apologised for publishing similar allegations, and now GB News has had to follow suit.
Our mission is to deliver humanitarian aid in some of the most volatile regions on earth. In carrying out this work, our own colleagues have been killed in terror attacks. Given this reality, the continued promotion of these false allegations is particularly offensive and is at risk of threatening the lives of our humanitarian workers and the communities we serve.
As a rigorously and independently audited organisation, there is no evidence whatsoever to support the claims made on these platforms. Our award-winning humanitarian work is a testament to thousands of colleagues working tirelessly, and to our supporters who trust us to deliver aid with accountability and transparency.
The Daily Mail issued its apology, mentioned above, on 3 April. In this case, and the GB News statement, the corrections are short, perfunctory statements. They do nothing to right the harms done by the original programme or article, which served to paint Muslims as terrorist sympathisers to the channel’s pathetic right-wing audience.
That association won’t go away because of a 100-word apology tucked away on a website.
MSM promoting racism
The recent Mail and GB News are examples of the casual Islamophobia being driven by the UK’s mainstream media, either. As a non-exhaustive snapshot going back over the last decade:
- April 2016. Press regulator IPSO declares the Daily Star Sunday’s header “UK mosques fundraising for terror” was “significantly misleading”. following a complaint lodged by myself. The paper published a retraction stating that Britain’s mosques were “not involved in any way”.
- December 2016. The Daily Mail‘s Katie Hopkins was made to apologise to a Muslim family whom she called “extremists with links to Al Qaeda”. Hopkins and the Mail paid out £150,000 in damages.
- May 2018. The Daily Telegraph paid “substantial damages” to Mohammed Kozbar, chairman of Finsbury Park Mosque. The High Court ruled that the paper had published defamatory claims that he blamed British foreign policy for the rise of Daesh.
- March 2020 The Times, The Telegraph, The Mail, and The Express paid damages to Scout leader Ahammed Hussain, a Muslim, after falsely claiming that he promoted extremism and had links to antisemitic organisations.
- December 2020. The Times apologised and paid £30k in damages of £30,000 to the human rights group CAGE, along with outreach director Moazzam Begg. It had reported that CAGE and Begg supported the suspected perpetrator of knife attacks in Reading.
- November 2021. The Mail on Sunday accused Wajed Iqbal of being a ”fixer” for the Rochdale grooming gang. He won £180k damages in the subsequent defamation suit.
Overt and covert
Even outside of these very direct cases of the MSM publishing racist, Islamophobic bile just because they think they can get away with, the UK press still drives racism in ways both overt and covert. It’s things like using dehumanising language like ‘flood’, ‘invasion’ and ‘cockroaches’ to refer to immigrants.
It could be the suspending Gary Lineker just for calling out the government’s racist policies in a tweet. It’s calling the Met’s racism a “hidden culture”, despite those who feel the brunt of it knowing it’s anything but hidden. Even structurally, it’s the BBC giving far-right bigots like Farage a disproportionate amount of airtime compared to the pitiful five seats that his MPs actually hold.
Sure, the right-wing rags listed above might have more obvious racist coverage that normalises bigotry. Certainly, their reporting emboldens the racist scumbags who rush around putting up the butcher’s apron in an attempt to intimidate and terrorise people of colour around the country. But, the coverage from the likes of the Guardian and the BBC – the supposedly respectable and neutral outlets – is also working to present the hate sweeping the country as a matter to discuss politely over supper, rather than fight in the streets. They would do well to remember that in the face of injustice, there can be no neutral stance.
One thing is clear: across the political spectrum mainstream media are directly responsible for fanning the flames of racism.
Featured image via the Canary
This post was originally published on Canary.