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luke
Joined: 11 Feb 2007
Location: by the sea
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 Posted: Wed Jul 09, 2008 1:01 pm Post subject: The shameful Islamophobia at the heart of Britain's press |
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| Quote: | The shameful Islamophobia at the heart of Britain's press
When a tabloid newspaper reports that a 'Muslim hate mob' is daubing abuse, can we believe them?
On the morning of 7 October 2006 The Sun newspaper splashed a dramatic story across its front page. The story – billed as exclusive – concerned a callous and cynical crime committed by Muslims. A team of Sun reporters described in graphic detail how what the paper labelled a "Muslim hate mob" had vandalised a house near Windsor. The Sun revealed that "vile yobs hurled bricks through windows and daubed obscenities. A message on the drive spelled out in 4ft-letters: 'Fuck off '."
One Tory MP, Philip Davies, was quoted venting outrage at this act of vandalism. "If there's anybody who should fuck off," Davies was quoted as saying, "it'sthe Muslims who are doing this kind of thing. Police should pull out the stops to track down these vile thugs".
The Sun left its readers in no doubt as to why the outrage had been committed. Local Muslims were waging a vendetta against four British soldiers who hoped to rent the house on their return from serving their country in Afghanistan. The paper quoted an army source saying that: "these guys have done nothing but bravely serve their country – yet they can't even live where they want in their own".
But there was one very big problem with The Sun story. There was no Muslim involvement of any kind. It is true that a house had been vandalised in Montagu Road, part of the comfortable and prosperous Windsor suburb of Datchet – as The Windsor Express had reported the previous day. It also looks very likely that the attack was connected with the potential arrival of four household cavalry officers.
The average house price in Montagu Road is around £600,000 and there is an air of almost rural tranquillity. As far as we could discover, no Muslims lived in the area. To all intents and purposes Montagu Road was a white, gated community. The Sun claim that a "Muslim hate mob" could have arrived unnoticed and committed vandalism without being observed was nothing short of preposterous. Furthermore, the police denied any Muslim connection.
In his article for The Windsor Express the previous day, local journalist Paul Pickett had written a far more scrupulous piece. He reported that the local army barracks had received three anonymous phone calls the previous week. They were not from Muslims, however, as The Sun reported. They were from local residents. Pickett reported that the anonymous calls objected to the presence of soldiers because they would lower property prices in the road. He also reported that around 40 local residents had signed a petition, objecting to the soldiers moving in.
We spoke to Jamie Pyatt, one of The Sun team of journalists who wrote the "exclusive" and he stood by his story. He told us that the police were being politically correct by not admitting that Muslims had carried out the crime. According to Pyatt, his contacts were under no doubt as to who vandalised the house. He claimed that there are lots of Asians on the road who could easily have seen British soldiers looking around in their combat gear. This was certainly not our impression. In fact, we did not see a single man, woman or child who looked remotely Muslim.
Eventually, even The Sun was forced to admit that there were problems with its story. Some four months after it appeared, under pressure from the Press Complaints Commission, a four-line correction was published. It read: "Following our report "Hounded out" about a soldiers' home in Datchet, Berkshire, being vandalised by Muslims, we have been asked to point out no threatening calls were logged at Combermere Barracks from Muslims and police have been unable to establish if any faith or religious group was responsible for the incident. We are happy to make this clear."
The Sun never retracted the sensational assertion that a "Muslim hate mob" had vandalised the house and, to this day, the original "Hounded Out" story can be found on The Sun website.
But Islamophobia As this pamphlet will illustrate, it can be encountered in the best circles: among our most famous novelists, among columnists from The Independent and Guardian newspapers, and in the Church of England. Its appeal is wide-ranging. "I am an Islamophobe, and proud of it," writes Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee, then writing for The Independent. "Islamophobia?" The Sunday Times columnist Rod Liddle rhetorically asks in the title of a speech, "Count me in." Imagine Liddle declaring: "Anti-Semitism? Count me in", or Toynbee announcing that she was "an anti-semite and proud of it". This just wouldn't happen and for very good reasons. Anti-semitism is recognised as an evil, noxious creed and its adherents barred from mainstream society and respectable organs of opinion. Not so Islamophobia.
Channel 4 Dispatches commissioned the Cardiff School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies, to examine reporting of Muslim issues. The team analysed some 974 stories and found that approximately two-thirds of all "news hooks" for stories about Muslims involved either terrorism (some 36 per cent of stories); religious issues such as Sharia law, highlighting cultural differences between British Muslims and others (22 per cent); or Muslim extremism, concerning figures such as Abu Hamsa. These stories all portrayed Muslims as a source of trouble. By contrast only 5 per cent of stories were based on problems facing British Muslims.
Here are some more false stories concerning Muslims in Britain. Some were pure inventions, others contained a grain of truth but were distorted.
"Muslim Sickos" Maddie Kidnap Shock' – Daily Star, 28 April 2008. The story did not, as readers might have inferred from the front-page headline, reveal that Madeleine McCann had been kidnapped by a Muslim "sicko". In fact, it refers to a website on which claims were made that Madeleine's parents were involved in her disappearance.
"Hogwash: Now the PC brigade bans piggy banks in case they offend Muslims" – Daily Express, 24 October 2005. The story claimed that NatWest and Halifax had removed images of piggy banks from their promotional material in an effort to avoid offending Muslim customers, since pork is forbidden in Islam. The paper quoted observers calling such action "barmy" and "bonkers", thereby stirring up a huge response from the public.
After the story's publication, the Halifax drily noted that it "has not withdrawn any piggy banks from branches" and noted that in fact it had not used piggy banks in its branches for a number of years. The NatWest press statement noted that: "There is absolutely no fact in the story."
"Get off my bus I need to pray" – The Sun, 28 March 2008. This was the story of a Muslim bus driver ordering his passengers off his bus so that he could pray. The Sun story, along with footage of the bus driver praying, was widely circulated around right-wing blogs. Dhimmi Watch, the right-wing blog on the site Jihad Watch that catalogues perceived outrages committed by Muslims, even included The Sun story in their "ever-expanding You Can't Make This Stuff Up file". Well, actually, you can. The bus had been delayed, so in order to maintain frequency the bus company had ordered the driver to stop his bus and allow passengers to board the bus behind. Tickets and CCTV evidence show that all the passengers were on that bus within a minute.
The so-called witness, a 21-year-old plumber, who recorded the bus driver praying, had not been on the bus, and had arrived after the incident to find a small crowd outside a bus.
"The crescent and the canteen" – The Economist, 19 October 2006. There was no truth in the article's suggestion that Leicester University had banned pork on campus. In actual fact, the university Student Union had made just one out of the numerous cafes on campus halal, in a decision which had as much to do with economic factors as cultural sensitivity as Leicester has a large number of Muslim students. The other 26 cafes on the campus, including the main canteen, were still serving pork as usual.
We should all feel a little bit ashamed about the way we treat Muslims in the media, in our politics, and on our streets. They are our fellow citizens, yet often we barely acknowledge them. We misrepresent and in certain cases persecute them. We do not treat Muslims with the tolerance, decency and fairness that we so often like to boast is the British way. We urgently need to change our public culture. |
from the independent
lenins tomb looks into the suns trevor kavanaghs response, and theres a related article in the independent by mark steel - wife-beating? that's fine – unless you're a muslim
did anyone see the channel 4 documentary? or know where to get it? 
if anyone else has any good articles or studies etc into islamophobia in the media, post them up |
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faceless
admin
Joined: 25 Apr 2006
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| Posted: Wed Jul 09, 2008 1:15 pm Post subject: |
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| I think this thread could run and run... good stuff. |
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luke
Joined: 11 Feb 2007
Location: by the sea
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| Posted: Wed Jul 09, 2008 1:27 pm Post subject: |
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| faceless wrote: | | I think this thread could run and run... good stuff. |
i did think that  |
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major.tom
Macho Business Donkey Wrestler
Joined: 21 Jan 2007
Location: BC, Canada
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| Posted: Wed Jul 09, 2008 2:50 pm Post subject: |
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| Wouldn't the "Muslim Hate Mob" story qualify as hate speech? It seems like fabricating villains without any supporting evidence (and in spite of evidence to the contrary) ought to have Scotland Yard's attention. Substitute "Jewish" for "Muslim" and this would be a clear case of antisemitism -- not merely a "phobia". |
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nekokate
Joined: 13 Dec 2006
Location: West Yorkshire, UK
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| Posted: Wed Jul 09, 2008 5:04 pm Post subject: |
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Brilliant post
I heard about the "Get off my bus, I need to pray" bullshit story from Richard Herring's podcast and I was going to get around to posting about it here, so I'm glad that wa included. It's vile and deliberate discrimination.
I know I've mentioned this a few times before, but we should also not forget the story about "Blind Man Refused Ride by Muslim Taxi Driver" which was also idiotically racist. If I recall correctly a blind man rang a taxi firm and a white driver showed up, took one look at his guide dog and said "Sorry, I don't take dogs in my cab". Then the guy rang a second firm and a Muslim driver showed up and said the same thing. Of course, this just gets reported as "Oh my God! The cheek of these Muslims - refusing to give a poor blind man a ride because dogs are considered filthy in their wacky faith! Git em out of this praahd country!" |
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luke
Joined: 11 Feb 2007
Location: by the sea
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luke
Joined: 11 Feb 2007
Location: by the sea
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| Posted: Fri Feb 27, 2009 11:33 am Post subject: |
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Sun pays £30,000 damages to Muslim bus driver accused of fanaticism
A London bus driver today accepted £30,000 in damages from the Sun over a claim that he ordered passengers off his vehicle so that he could pray.
The story in March last year caused Arunas Raulynaitis considerable distress and embarrassment, his solicitor, Stephen Loughrey, told Mr Justice Eady at the high court in London.
Loughrey said the newspaper now accepted that the allegations were entirely false and that Raulynaitis did not order any passengers off, there was no rucksack and no one refused to reboard because they feared he was a fanatic.
"The article suggested that Raulynaitis was so arrogant, unprofessional and contemptuous of the passengers within his care whom he is paid to serve, that he ordered them off his bus so that he could pray," he added.
"The article went on to allege that the passengers later refused to reboard the bus because they spotted a rucksack and feared he may be a fanatic and therefore, it is to be inferred, a terrorist," Loughrey told the court.
"While it is the case that Raulynaitis did pray on the bus, he did so during his statutory rest break, as he is of course entitled to do. Not a single passenger was inconvenienced in any way. It transpires that an individual who noticed Raulynaitis at prayer chose to film this act on a mobile phone and sent the video to the Sun, which then reproduced stills from it alongside the article, as well as the footage itself on the Sun's website."
Loughrey said the article not only created an utterly false impression of Raulynaitis's attitude toward his passengers, but also wrongly cast serious aspersions on his religious faith.
He added that News Group Newspapers, the News International subsidiary that publishes the Sun, had already published an apology and agreed to pay substantial damages plus costs.
The newspaper's solicitor, Patrick Callaghan, apologised for the publication of the false allegations.
Raulynaitis's law firm, Carter-Ruck, said the damages were for libel and breach of privacy. "As well as being highly defamatory of Raulynaitis, the article was also a clear and serious infringement of his privacy," Carter-Ruck added.
"It included photographs of him at prayer, and indeed the website version of the article included deeply intrusive mobile phone footage, which readers of the Sun were encouraged to watch.
"References to the false story quickly found their way on to a number of other often Islamophobic websites and the footage of Raulynaitis at prayer was also posted on YouTube, where it was viewed by thousands more people
from http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/feb/26/sun-pays-damages-to-muslim-bus-driver |
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faceless
admin
Joined: 25 Apr 2006
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| Posted: Fri Feb 27, 2009 2:21 pm Post subject: |
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| haha, great stuff. I hope Mr Raulynaitis is spending the money on something suitably EXTREMIST like some nice prayer mats. |
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