The PCC tries to lick the Express into submission

Remember the complaint to the Press Complaints Commission about the Express article 'Muslims tell us how to run our schools' that I covered in 'More bullshit from the Express'?

If you do, you might remember that I made some predictions about what the outcome would be after my complaint was rejected and the Commission decided to look solely at the MCB complaint. I said:

Only the most obvious and outrageous inaccuracies in the article will be found to be inaccurate by the PCC. That might only even amount to the claim that modesty rules say that boys should be covered from navel to neck while swimming. Everything else will be deemed unlikely to mislead. The Express will have to print an apology of a couple of lines long. That's it, and that's all.

I was wrong on both counts. I got a summary in the post of the Commission decision over the MCB complaint.

Firstly, the Commission did rule that the article had the potential to mislead. Not in every case, and there were one or two weird decisions and mentions of the paper's 'robust' position on the report, but overall the decision was that the article was misleading. Funny that.

Secondly, I was wrong when I said that all that would happen would be that the Express would have to print a retraction a couple of lines long. It turns out that the Commission would have been satisfied with less than even that. It decided that all the Express needed to do was print a letter from the MCB.

Any of you unfortunate enough to have read this blog regularly will be familiar with the 'Withdrawn!' tactic, and know how it is sometimes used to create the impression that someone is lying. In brief, what happens is that a paper will produce an article that opens by telling readers what happened. Late on in the article, there'll be a quote from someone refuting what the article has said, but because the article has already said what has happened, it makes the person quoted look like a liar, even if they're telling the truth. This means the paper can create as false an impression as it wants, but the PCC will be satisfied because the truth is included somewhere in the article.

This can work on a wider level, with a paper producing article after article saying one thing - exaggerating immigration figures for instance - and then reporting official figures in the knowledge that their readers will be sceptical of them.

So in this instance, we have a paper that produces negative article after bad smear job after negative article about Muslims, the article this complaint is about being a case in point. Just look at the headline. and you can see the impression the paper has been trying for ages to paint of Muslims. Now, what do you think regular Express readers will think of a letter published by the MCB pointing out that the paper had lied about their report? Especially as part of that picture is of overly censorious people who do everything to stifle criticism.

Exactly.

So the paper will never have to apologise in its own words, and the only thing regular Express readers who bother to read the letters page will see is a complaining letter from the people they think complain unnecessarily all the time over things like pictures of pigs. Plus, those who only read the paper online would never see the letter and the article will remain online pretty much forever. So you can see why the MCB have rejected that offer. I certainly don't blame them.

The shame is though, that this means the paper doesn't have to do anything at all. It can get away with lying through its teeth, and all the MCB can do about it is play into its hands and reinforce its agenda.

Now, I don't want to look like I'm blowing my own trumpet, but I can't help wondering whether my own complaint was dismissed before being taken very far because it was a little more anal than the MCB's. From the Commission's decision, it seems that the MCB's complaint was more general, and only addressed one or two of the most glaring misrepresentations. Mine ran to eight pages of bullet pointed examples of each of the most obvious misrepresentations and explanations of how they might mislead. The only things the summary of the PCC's decision I've seen mentions are - use of the phrase 'Taliban style', mentioning boys covering the body from navel to neck while swimming (which the paper apologised for), over use of the word 'ban', with specific references to banning swimming, and over use of the phrase 'un-Islamic activities' in quotation marks. I can't help wondering if the PCC knew that a comprehensive list of every misrepresentation in the article would make the invitation to publish a letter look as woefully inadequate as it actually is.

In my original letter to the PCC, I asked where it would lead if papers were allowed to produce articles like this without censure. Since the PCC is made up largely of newspaper editors, it ought to know why the invitation to publish a letter is an inadequate punishment of the paper - and we can see where allowing this kind of thing can lead by looking at the Express's 'ethnic crisis' story.

To nip any strawmen in the bud - particularly the one bandied about by papers like the Express - I don't have any problem with papers having the freedom to take any kind of stance over immigration or race they like, short of incitement to violence. I do have a problem with papers lying and distorting information to reinforce their points. If the MCB really had issued demands to ban things left and right, the paper should have been able to report it. If there really was a shocking report that said that children were being held back at school because too many pupils can't speak English, the paper should be able to report it. If Sheffield City Council really had produced a report saying that there was an ethnic baby boom that constituted a crisis that would lead to riots, the paper should be allowed to report that, too.

The problem is that none of these things happened, but the paper pretended they did anyway.

What kind of people make stuff up to create a terrible impression of immigrants and ethnic minorities? Any of them very nice?

Tabloid Groundhog Day

Today, Punksatawntee Peter Hill must have got out of bed and been able to see his shadow, because there's an anti-Immigration story in the Express. (If he can't see his shadow - there'll bee an anti-immigration story too. Hurrah!) It's virtually identical to one or two produced in October by the Mail that I covered just after coming back from a bit of a hiatus, in 'They're coming to turf us out of our beds and EAT OUR CHILDREN!' Parts I and II, and 'Did I mention they were going to EAT OUR CHILDREN?' Ministry of Truth covered something similar from the Express round about the same time, pointing out that this sort of rubbish goes back at least thirty years.

The story is 'Schools where children don't speak English'. All the points I could make in this post were made back then, so my job here is almost done. The same mashing together of everyone who can speak more than one language to paint a frightening picture of how many kids can't speak English at all is there. And I'll repeat my point Vladimir Nabokov speaking English as a second language. And add Vikram Seth. And Haruki Murakami. And Jhumpa Lahiri. And Joseph Conrad. And on. And on. And on.

A couple of new things - firstly, the thing about 'not speaking English to your children at home is discriminating' from Anne Cryer MP is utter, utter shite. My other half (Crackers six to ten?) is a speech and language therapist, so she kind of knows what she's on about. She's very firm about the advantages of bilingualism, and wishes more parents would speak their mother tongue to children at home, not less. Once a kid can speak English, speaking another language at home can help with a child's learning even apart from the practical benefit of being able to speak another language.

Again, there's a bit of number fudging, this time with showing the percentage of children who speak English as an additional language, then the actual number increase without showing the percentage increase in pupils who speak English as an additional language. That's a rise of one percent. Ooh, I'm so frightened.

Another weird thing about the Express's figures is that the paper puts the number of Primary school pupils at 2.9 million, and the number of Secondary school pupils at 3.2 million. The actual figures the paper is quoting puts the totals at roughly 3.3 million each. Weird, that one.

The interesting thing about this story is the use of a picture of some Muslims to illustrate a negative immigration story. Again. Sod Godwin's Law - this sort of thing works on the same level as 'Der Ewige Jude', the Nazi propaganda film that intercut a documentary about the migration of Jews with shots of teaming rats to create a connection between the two. Here we have negative stories about immigration and ethnicity mostly illustrated with pictures of Muslims to create hamfisted links between the two. How many of the girls in the picture are actually British? How many speak English? Doesn't matter for the Express.

In fact, the main difference between the Mail's old story and this 'new' one is that where the Mail attacked Polish people in its coverage, the Express attacks Muslims here, with extra attention given to the crap about Mohammed being the second most popular boy's name (if you add together all fourteen possible spellings).

If I can quote the other half again - it's not reporting the news, it's just propaganda. And anti-'ethnic', anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant propaganda at that. The Express really does seem to have become a recruiting pamphlet for the BNP.

If only the DCLG hadn't dropped a bollock

Sometimes, when you're the sort of sad sack who likes to mock how the tabloids spin and distort Government figures and documents (along with other documents they don't like), the Government doesn't do itself any flipping favours.

It looked like there was a doozy in today's Mail with the headline 'Councils ordered to carry out charm offensive for migrants and travellers' to add to my last posting, but the DCLG had to go and shoot itself in the foot and lose a toe.

If you hadn't guessed, the report is about the myth busting information packs I mentioned in 'At last they admit: the tabloids have damaged Britain' - sort of. And it's a real pity the DCLG makes a blunder, as the article was shping up to be a fantastic example of how the tabloids make use of a rhetorical crowbar to make the facts fit their agenda - so I'll look at that first, and then the blunder.

Ruth Kelly is ordering councils to take part in a huge charm offensive on behalf of migrants and travellers.

The Communities Secretary wants town halls to spend hundreds of thousands of pounds of taxpayers' money 'combating misinformation'.

Says the article in the opening, almost certainly talking about the myth busting packs mentioned in the report 'Our shared future', but maybe not. This is left ambiguous for a reason, and that reason is that the fact sheets the article go on about are from way back in April, and not connected to the report at all. So, bear in mind that the report was a set of recommendations, which may or may not be taken up by Ministers. The 'ordered' bit - just a tad fanciful.

The next bit is great, it's why it really is such a shame that the DCLG dropped a bollock. It says:

Her officials have produced sheets of pro-migrant information. But critics warned that Miss Kelly was asking councils to promote 'selective propaganda'.

The messages councils must give out include the statement that: "Romany Gipsies [sic. Remember, this is the paper's preferred spelling so it can avoid accusations of siscriminating against Gypsies] have very strict customs about hygiene and cleanliness, developed over many years to cope with living on the roads."

See that? Any positive massage about 'migrants' = selective propaganda. As opposed to the considered, balanced message put forward by the Mail. Stop laughing. It fantastically uses that point to segue into talking about how Romany Gypsies have rules about cleanliness, leaving us no doubts about what the Mail thinks about that. And check out the use of the word 'must'. The information 'must' say this. Except the actual pages on the DCLG website say this:

The information in these pages contains a number of facts which can be used by local authority frontline staff to discredit many popular myths as well as being provided to councillors and candidates when impartial information is required. [Emphasis mine].

See, 'can' doesn't mean 'must'. That's why they're, you know, different words. And on:

Councils are also told to claim that the Health Service would 'literally collapse' without migrant nurses, doctors and cleaners.

Umm...because it would. Next:

Supposedly impartial civil servants are instructed to plant favourable stories in local newspapers, and even take part in election campaigns where immigrationis a big issue.

Not quite. Here's what the DCLG site actually says:

The code of recommended practice, which regulates local authority publicity, does not prevent councils, while exercising proper caution, from providing accurate and impartial information during an election campaign, without making reference to a particular political campaign.

And:

The Code of Conduct on Local Government Publicity also makes it acceptable for councils to respond to events during an election period, as long as their responses are factual and not party political. In practice, this means councils can, and should, refute any untrue or misleading information circulating in the area that could lead to racial hatred or damage relations between people from different racial groups.

The site doesn't talk about favourable stories, but using facts to counter misinformation. Presumably , the Mail would prefer Councils to let stuff like BNP claims about Africans being given thousands of pounds to move into an area go unchallenged. Along with the garbage it churns out itself, obviously. Next:

Officials are told to seek 'quick wins' by planting stories in local newspapers and on TV. The website says: "Promote human interest stories in the media locally, for example how migrants volunteer and contribute to society in various roles."

Since the site is peppered with references about facts, and given that there's a 'for example' before the bit about migrants volunteering, it's clear that this is only being suggested to councils to say if it's true. Next:

Time must also be spent preparing councillors to take part in the charm offensive. The DCLG says: "Ensure members have good accurate information and advice so they can speak with confidence on controversial issues."

What would the Mail prefer? Clueless councillors who have no idea whether the negative stuff they hear about migrants is true or not? I think we should be told.

Next:

But critics said many of the claims are themselves open to challenge.

One states: "Priority for social housing is based solely on housing need." But the Government's own integration commission last week said social housing should no longer be provided for particular groups.

This is being a bit loose with the facts. 'Our shared future' talks about restricting funding for single groups provided by charities and housing associations and so on. Not the direct allocation of Local Authority housing. Here's what it says:

All agencies, including Local Authorities and affordable housing providers, should operate inclusive allocations and lettings policies. Unless there is a clear business and equalities case, single group funding should not be promoted (see Annex D). In exceptional cases, where such funding is awarded, the provider should demonstrate clearly how its policies will promote community cohesion and integration.

But then!

Another claim is that: "The belief that Britain has a particularly high rate of immigration is false. About 5 per cent of the UK population was born abroad."

But data produced by the Office for National Statistics for MPs said 5,699,000 people living in Britain today were born overseas - 10 per cent of the population.

And it was all going so well! The 2001 census puts the level at 1 in 12, or just over 8%.

And then:

The fact sheets also state: "There is no discernible statistical evidence that migrants from accession countries contribute to a rise in claims for benefits."

Yet Government figures show there have been at least 92,000 successful benefit claims made by Eastern Europeans. The bill is likely to be £100million.

This is the Mail being a little bit dishonest with what the DCLG is saying, but only because the DCLG have given the paper the opportunity by not wording things very well. Since the section of the site this is taken from is talking about the myths surrounding employment, and follows points about how Eastern Europeans come here to work rather than claim benefit, it is pretty clear that the Department is talking about unemployment benefit. Here's the full quote, along with the point that comes directly before it:

• Data shows that migrants come to the UK to work, not to claim benefits. 99 per cent of applications for National Insurance numbers made by new migrants from May 2004 - Sept 05 were for employment purposes.

• There is no discernible statistical evidence that migrants from accession countries contribute to a rise in claims for benefits. In the same period only 4 per cent were allowed to claim Income support and Job Seekers Allowance benefits

• Migrants are only able to claim income related benefits once they have worked legally in the UK for a full year.

This last point is followed by some rent-a-quotes from the Tax-Payers Alliance and MigrationWatch, and that's it.

This article still shows what the Mail does. You can so easily imagine the hack (James Slack - natch) seeing the bit about myth busting packs and buggering off at top speed to find them. I should have guessed the Mail wouldn't ignore the existence of the myth busting packs, but move to trash them as early as it could. Anyway, that what he found was a couple of months old and not exactly what the report was talking about didn't matter. In it goes as if it's new, getting jumbled up and made to look like it's a set of new diktats rather than old guidelines that predate 'Our shared future'. Add lashings of snide implications about minority groups (Gypsies are just dirty you know) and some great suggestions that anything not rabidly anti-immigration must be dodgy propaganda and away you go. Never mind the site actually emphasises over and again the importance of combating myths with facts. But then, one of those facts turned out not to be true.

Poor show, DCLG, poor show.

At last they admit: the tabloids have damaged Britain

So, now I've had a better look at 'Our shared future', plus the Mail and the Express's coverage of it. Both papers misrepresent the report quite a bit, with the Express, as ever, giving the most exaggerated and distorted version of the report. The Daily Mail's version is now 'Culture briefing packs will teach immigrants how to queue', with the previous headline 'Billions spent on immigrants is driving communities apart' relegated to a subheading, and the Express's version is 'RACIAL TENSION IS BUBBLING - ADMIT MINISTERS AT LAST', which fits nicely with the front page splash 'At last they admit: Immigration has damaged Britain'.

No 'they' don't

Obsolete has a great fisk of the Express's version already, so much of what I could say would be unnecessarily reproducing it, badly. Have a look. But it is worth repeating that both the Express headlines are utter, utter nonsense, and bear absolutely no resemblance whatsoever to what the report actually says. Far from saying that immigration has damaged Britain, the report actually says:

Although as a nation we can see the benefits of immigration, some people are concerned about its impacts in their local area – we need to address this [emphasis mine]

and:

The majority of the evidence available points to migrants being a critical part of the UK’s current economic success.

Does it look like the report is saying immigration has damaged Britain? Does it really?

It also says:

There is no doubt that migrants have changed Britain, and that most people think this is a good thing – another MORI Poll from August 2005 found that 62% of people thought multiculturalism made Britain a better place to live, for example. And 58% of people surveyed in our January 2007 MORI poll agreed that immigrants make Britain more open to new ideas and cultures.

What the report does mention is people's perception of immigration, which is something the Express is keen to mention, saying:

It showed that nearly two thirds of people now believe too many immigrants have been allowed into the UK.

This is incredibly disingenuous. Because while the report does say that, it has explained the context of the situation with the quotes above, and it immediately follows up by pointing out that many of these people have a distorted and exaggerated idea of how many immigrants there are, and to explain why many people believe this although it is wrong.

Here's an extended quote from the report, so you can see exactly what it says in its proper context:

68% of people agreed with the statement in our MORI poll that there were too many migrants in Britain – and 47% of the Asian, and 45% of the Black respondents felt that there was too much immigration into Britain.

Our hypothesis is that this might be because people are confused about the difference between UK born minorities, settled migrants from the past, current legal migrants, asylum seekers and illegal immigrants; with a tendency among some to see a person from any of these groups in the most negative way possible. And alongside this tendency is one that sees migrants alone as being responsible for larger problems or trends – with house price increases being blamed on economic migrants, for example, when they are just one factor within a booming economy.

So, while it does point out that most people think there are too many immigrants in the UK, it does so in the context of pointing out that those people are wrong and goes on to explain why these people might have the wrong idea. It most definitely does not blame immigration for damaging Britain.

More on the Express in a bit, but for now, let's have a look at the Mail's coverage. The Mail's original article (that I looked at in 'The Daily Mail is actually driving communities apart', which is back up now I've made a couple of little changes) has been completely replaced with 'Culture briefing packs will teach immigrants how to queue'. When I first noticed the change, all that had happened was that a few sentences had been bolted on the beginning and the rest of the article had been left pretty much untouched, but now it's completely gone from the site. You can see it here on infowars.net (I'm not endorsing infowars.net, incidentally - they could be a right bunch of numpties, for all I know).

Anyway, the new version focuses solely on the proposal for information packs to be given to new immigrants, and there's also this, 'Teenagers could be told to bond with immigrants'. It's curious that the paper would shift away from trumpeting the report in the same way the Express does, for 'admitting' a bunch of stuff it doesn't actually say, to this.

Funnily enough, it still includes some misinformation about what the report says, but it has gone from implying the report has answered all its prayers to pretty much trashing it. Maybe that's because the paper noticed that it didn't in fact say half the stuff it pretended it did and was actually quite positive about immigration. And for the Mail, 'positive about immigration' means 'must be crap'.

Now, onto the important thing the paper misrepresents, because it ties in with the Express. The Mail says this:

Senior Labour politicians such as Margaret Hodge and Jon Cruddas have spoken of fears among whites that newly-arrived immigrants are preferred for council homes.

The commission warns that a poll shows more than half the population share such fears. Its report, Our Shared Future, said: "This finding highlights that people are very sensitive about perceived freeloading by other groups, and about others getting a better deal than them when it comes to certain public services. The groups most often named spontaneously were asylum seekers, refugees or immigrants."

Here, the Mail is quite obviously deliberately avoiding the report's explanation of why people believe this. The Express does this too, and Obsolete did give this quote a good kicking already, but I want to get a couple of digs in myself:

Last night the report was being seen as vindication at last of the warnings repeatedly raised against relaxing border controls by the Daily Express and other campaigners.

Critics of Labour’s decision to relax immigration controls were vilified and decried as “racist” by ministers. But after record numbers of newcomers have swelled the population and put crippling pressure on public services and housing, ministers are now in retreat.

As I pointed out in 'The Daily Mail is actually driving communities apart', the report does not say that resources are unfairly allocated. It says that people think they are, and it's conclusion as to why is incredibly important:

But as our interim statement highlighted, this seems to be a stronger national than local perception (where locally only 25% feel that some groups get unfair priority) [...] it seems that there is a national/local perceptions gap about unfair access to public services.

MORI suggest that people’s national picture may come from the national media. Local views on the other hand may be based on personal experience or anecdotes told by friends, family or neighbours.

In other words, when people can observe what is actually happening themselves, they're less likely to believe that things are unfairly allocated - but when they can only get their information from the press, they're more likely to think things are unfair.

The way both papers have dealt with covering this report is an excellent example of exactly why this might be. The report says people have a different impression of how things are allocated when they can't see from themselves to when they have to rely on the press, and both papers ignore their own culpability, with one just deciding to scream about how things are unfairly allocated instead. Great.

There is one more thing I want to look at. Both papers are quite taken with the idea of new arrivals being given information packs. They would be, since they emphasise how immigrants spit in the streets, don't know how to queue and are generally a nuisance, but there is another set of information packs the report recommends sending out that don't get a mention.

Firstly, the report says this:

But they [national media] will always sell papers on the basis of what they know people want to hear – and that might mean stories about increased immigration, conflict or unfairness, or stories that are aimed to shock or enrage.

Before going on to recommend targeting local media to spread positive coverage of immigration to local areas, and going on to recommend:

Local Authorities should develop myth busting strategies aimed specifically at established communities. This might include myth busting packs which would contain accurate and impartial information about recent changes to the community and the benefits of migration. It might include face to face dialogue with communities most at risk of believing the myth.

So, in summary - the report says that many people have a skewed view of the effects of immigration, suggesting that this probably comes from the national media. It criticises the coverage of the national media. It then goes on to recommend giving local people myth busting packs to dispel any myths they may have heard - some of which would have come from the national media.

Just looking at the coverage of these to papers shows why that might be necessary. In covering a report and pretending that the things it says about attitudes to immigration - which it clearly states are wrong - and pretending these things actually apply to immigration itself, the papers have illustrated the report's point perfectly.

The Mail's coverage is the most curious though - and the most revealing about that tabloid's agenda. The Express's is easy. It doesn't like 'ethnics', and will take every given opportunity to attack ethnic minorities and immigrants. Any report, however positive, will just be lied about and twisted. The Mail's approach started off the same, but as I said in 'The Daily Mail is actually driving communities apart', it's important for the paper to depict anything that is ever done about immigration as being rubbish and a shambles, so its original coverage gets thrown out to fit the report into that overarching myth instead.

Perhaps the hacks at the Mail were savvy enough to realise that giving positive coverage to the report would also by implication give positive coverage to the bits where it trashes the paper's own agenda. Still, it shows the paper to be run by a bunch of petty, petulant children. What it does very effectively expose is how much the paper spins, changing its entire attitude overnight.

The Daily Mail is actually driving communities apart

Sometimes, it's the little things that make all the difference. One of the most frustrating things about the Express's recent racist outburst about the number of ethnic minority babies born in Sheffield being a crisis was that most of the article was pretty much okay. Even so, the paper managed to take a report that said that things were fine in Sheffield and set out measures for keeping things that way, and turned it into a report that warned of simmering tensions about to boil over into rioting.

The Mail does something similar today in 'Billions spent on helping immigrants is actually driving communities apart' with the Commission on Integration and Cohesion report 'Our shared future' (which it wrongly refers to as being called 'Our Nation's Future).

*UPDATE* Since typing this up, I decided to check the article to make sure it still gave the Commission report the wrong title. Stupidly, I refreshed my screen without taking a screen dump or saving the html file - and the entire article's changed. It now has the headline 'Culture briefing packs will teach immigrants how to queue'. I'll have a look at this version in a second post, but it's useful to leave my first post up to show how the article has been further sexed up.

The report is pretty comprehensive and incredibly nuanced. Over and over again, it warns about making blanket judgements and makes sure to emphasise that things will work differently in different areas, with statements like:

That this work takes different forms in different local areas is in our view entirely right, and this report aims to set that out more clearly. Successive governments have sought to respond to the challenges outlined above at a national level, and it is right that they should have done so – indeed, we make recommendations in our report about how Government can respond in the future by creating national policy and shaping, as best it can, the tone and characteristics of national debate in this area.

But as the data in our report sets out, it has also become evident that communities in some parts of the country are more cohesive than others – with people in areas such as Stockport and Cambridge apparently positive about cohesion, but others in places along the M62 corridor and around the Wash feeling less optimistic. And these variations often seem to be the result of local characteristics, initiatives or political leadership – relying on a clear local vision (in Chesterfield, for example) or activities to address challenges head on.

The trouble is, that doesn't fit the Mail's overarching theme of reporting everything that's ever done that's even remotely connected to race or immigration is a total shambles. So instead of reporting the shades of grey this report mentions, and the important caveats it provides, the paper just pretends they're not there to crowbar the report into their world view.

The headline for instance is, as ever, complete rubbish. The report is about more than just helping immigrants, doesn't say that billions is spent helping them, and doesn't say that the money is necessarily driving communities apart. What it does say is that some approaches to helping all kinds of different groups are better than others, and that those should be favoured. It also very strongly emphasises that cohesion is broadly fine across the country, and is only a problem in a few areas, saying quite clearly:

79% of people agreed or strongly agreed that people of different backgrounds got on well in their local areas (very close to the Citizenship Survey figure of 80%)

Cohesion rates in areas ranged from 38% to 90% – but in only ten out of 387 areas was it under 60% [emphasis in the original]

So the whole idea of driving communities apart is a bit fanciful. As is the opening sentence, which says:

Councils were today found to be wasting billions of pounds on community policies that unwittingly fuel ethnic tensions.

The report doesn't say that at all. It never once uses the term 'ethnic tension'. It says that some programmes are better than others and should be favoured, but it doesn't call the money spent on any as a waste, nor does it imply that. Let's say a Council decides to fund an Irish Centre that gets pretty well used and does good work for the Irish people in the area, but it fuels the idea that the Irish are getting unfair preferential treatment. That doesn't mean the money was wasted, because the Centre's good work for the people who use it still counts for something. And why is the paper focusing solely on immigrants and ethnic tensions, when the report it's about actually talks about much more?

It carries the fanciful theme through to the next sentence:

A ground-breaking report said that thousands of drop- in centres for individual ethnic minority communities were simply keeping people apart.

It doesn't really say that. We're closer to what the report does say, but it doesn't make a blanket statement like that. It does draw attention to the fact that funding single groups can have a negative effect, but it does so with all sorts of caveats about how some will be okay.

The rest of the article follows the same template, saying things that are sort of accurate, but devoid of any of the nuance that is present in the report. There are one or two little inaccuracies, but nothing amazingly major of the sort we might expect from say, the Express covering something produced by Muslims. Or Sheffield City Council.

The thing is though, by the time the reader reaches this far, if they ever do, they've already been given a number of false impressions that will cloud the way they see the rest of the article, and these carry on throughout. These are:

• That the report is specifically about immigration and ethnicity
• That it is a 'damning report'
• That it makes blanket judgements about things being a waste of money
• That it specifies how much is spent
• That it implies that any is wasted
• That it states that things are driving people apart, or that anything has 'backfired'

It really is not a damning report at all. Anybody reading this without looking at the report itself, which will be most people since the paper gives the wrong bloody title, will have the idea that this report slams multicultural policy in the same way this newspaper does, but it really isn't. Sure, after having looked at it properly, there are things in it I might have issues with, but it really idoesn't much resemble the Mail's version of it. But that doesn't fit the Mail's prejudices, so it must be distorted.

There is something the report does say that the Mail ignores. The report says this:

Our MORI poll found that more than half of people (56%) feel that some groups in Britain get unfair priority when it comes to public services like housing, health services and schools. Fewer than one in seven (16%) actively disagreed with the statement.

[...]

But as our interim statement highlighted, this seems to be a stronger national than local perception (where locally only 25% feel that some groups get unfair priority).

[...]

MORI suggest that people’s national picture may come from the national media. Local views on the other hand may be based on personal experience or anecdotes told by friends, family or neighbours.

So, people tend to think that some groups are unfairly given priority over others, but just not where they live. This is probably because they get their view of what is going on nationally from sources like the Mail rather than direct experience. Now look at the Mail's headline for this article. I wonder why the paper never covered this bit.

There's also a big section about countering any myths that might get spread about the Councils' work, and how to work with the media. In it is this:

The national media often takes its responsibility for setting the tone of narratives around diversity and integration seriously. The Daily Mail was an important champion of Neville and Doreen Lawrence during and after the inquiry into their son’s death. And more recently, the Mirror and others have set out positive messages in the context of possible far right gains in local elections.

So far so good. Yay for the Mail for doing something good ten years ago. But then:

But they will always sell papers on the basis of what they know people want to hear – and that might mean stories about increased immigration, conflict or unfairness, or stories that are aimed to shock or enrage.

And the report goes on to detail how to target the local media to counter this.

It's no wonder the Mail ignores the whole myth busting section, and the necessity of handing out myth-busting packs, given the paper's role in the spreading of those myths.

Including in this article.

Creating scapegoats with the Daily Mail

I was very suspicious when I saw this headline in yesterday's Mail 'Illegal immigrant is quizzed over PC's knife murder'. So suspicious that I saved the page as an html file because I kind of knew it would disappear.

Here's a quote:

An illegal immigrant is being questioned over the death of a policeman in a high street knife rampage.
[...]
The Daily Mail can reveal the man is an "overstayer" who should have left Britain five years ago. Although his visa had expired, he was allowed to avoid deportation from the country.

The disclosure will embarrass the Government and bring further questions about the shambolic immigration system.

According to the Home Office, there are 570,000 illegal immigrants in Britain, including hundreds of thousands of over-stayers.

Wow! Hundres of thousands of overstayers and potential knife murderers! Are any of us safe while these visa overstayers are allowed to stay unchecked?

Now the article has vanished from the site and has been replaced.

You can still stick 'Illegal immigrant quizzed' into Google and get links to the Mail and thisislondon (at the time of this writing), but they point to a new version on the respective sites. The ones to the Mail now go to 'First picture of man accused of killing PC'. It includes this:

Police said last night that African-born Obih was in the UK legally, having been granted indefinite leave to stay.

Earlier reports had said, wrongly, that he had overstayed his visa and was due for deportation.

Yeah, earlier reports by you.

The Mail has form in this kind of thing. In December, I posted 'Strangler - must be a dirty foreigner - maybe even Polish! (Or the case of the mysterious disappearing articles)', covering how the paper reported that the Ipswich Strangler was Polish, before having to remove the mentions from the site when it turned out he wasn't.

Blaming a group of people the paper doesn't like for bad things without any evidence to make a cheap political point seems to happen now and again in the Mail.

Who knew!

But, but . . . the veil is bad.

This post has been updated since I posted it on 12 June.

Remember this?



I spoke about it in 'Should the guilty go free, or should we stop women wearing cloth in front of their face? You decide' and 'Should the guilty go free *UPDATE*'

In the Express today and yesterday, we have a couple of articles about the conviction of Mahmod Mahmod for killing his own daughter. We have 'Father guilty over "honour killing"', 'Father found guilty of his daughter's "honour killing"' and, presumably because the two other titles weren't clear enough about the father's religion, 'Guilty: the Muslim father who ordered '"honour killing"'.

Of the three, only the last mentions this:

During the trial, her elder sister Bekhal, 22, said Banaz was beaten as she was growing up when she made herself “westernised” by using hairspray or gel. Bekhal still fears for her life and when later asked about the killers, she said: “They don’t deserve to be on this Earth.”

Which is curious, since her testimony paints a rather nasty picture of the family life and the characters of the victim's father and uncle that is actually quite relevant to the story. But even that's more than the Sun, which doesn't even mention the sister's existence in either of the articles, 'Murdered for falling in love' and '"Honour killing" dad found guilty'.

*UPDATE* The god of leaving newspapers on bus seats has been kind to me today (13 June) and left a copy of today's Sun on the seat next to me this morning. It's where I first saw this, 'They can't have same life here' - an entire article devoted to thve testimony of Bekhal Mahmod, published a day after my original post.

The BBC has this, in 'Lover "heartbroken" over killing':

Banaz's older sister Bekhal, 22, said she paid the ultimate price of finding happiness with a man who did not meet with the approval of her Kurdish family.

"She just wanted to get out of it and live her life. That's all she wanted - she didn't want the world," said Bekhal.

Four years before her sister's death, Bekhal fled the family home in Mitcham, south-west London, after being beaten and threatened by her father for "bringing shame on his name" by adopting Western ways.

[...]

Bekhal said: "To do this to their own flesh and blood was unforgivable. Forgiveness isn't even a question. They don't deserve to be on this earth.

"How can somebody think that kind of thing and actually do it to your own flesh and blood? It's disgusting."

There's quite a bit of meat in that quote, so it's a bit odd that the Express only mentions it in passing - and the Sun not at all *See updated sections*. There's a clue as to why it might have been left out, in a picture also in the BBC report of Bekhal Mahmod:


Oh.

Even the Mail gives rather a lot of space to covering Bekhal's testimony, mentioning her wearing the veil and her reasons for it in 'The tragic story of Banaz Mahmod: she fell in love at 19, so her family killed her'.

There's also this, in the BBC report, which I snipped out:

Now living in fear of her own life, Bekhal refuses to reveal where she lives and never ventures outside without wearing a full veil, showing only her eyes.

So, there are other reasons for wearing a veil than just as a mark of separation. Who knew?

There's also this, from a set of notes on the trial:

The jury asked Bekhal why she was wearing a full veil. She composed a short statement to say that she was covered not from religious conviction but because she feared reprisals from her family and did not wish her current appearance to be seen.

And:

Today Bekhal Mahmod told a very different story. She arrived in court wearing a full-face veil which she was only happy to remove once she had been screened from the view of her father and uncle.

If the Express had its way, this woman's testimony would not have been possible without her showing her face to her sister's murderers. Given her distress, there's a possibility that she would have chosen not to testify rather than do that, and who knows how different the trial's outcome might have been?

Since the Express wants a full ban on veils everywhere, and railed against the decision to make it up to the judge to decide whether or not a defendant can wear a veil, it's safe to assume that the paper would even object to her being allowed to have a screen hiding her from the view of the defendants.

Here's the thing. It's impossible to make blanket statements about the reasons people do things like wear a veil. I have to admit the possibility of a woman wanting to wear a veil to hide herself from her father who had murdered her sister hadn't occurred to me when I first looked at the Express' rantings about banning veils in courts - but it perfectly illustrates why this sort of thing is impossible to make blanket judgements that are devoid of nuance about. A blanket ban would have almost certainly affected the process of this trial, and some quite damning testimony might have been lost.

That said, you'd have thought the idea of a woman wearing a veil to hide her face from her father - who murdered her sister in an honour killing - would be perfect ammunition for the Express to lay into Muslims with - but they curiously choose not to. This is, I think, because it wouldn't support the Express's line that veils=mark of separation=Bad Bad Thing in any and all circumstances, and we couldn't have that. Eliminating nuance is a priority for papers like the Express and the Sun. So something pretty darn relevant to the story gets nicely airbrushed from existence.

*UPDATE* I removed a couple of references to the Sun from the above paragraph, since the Sun now does have coverage in today's edition.

If I could quote my other half again, "that's not reporting the news, that's just propaganda."

Magic Mail typo

Quality typo on the Mail site today. Look carefully:


Mail patient? It's Political Correctness Gone Mad.

Inside the mind of the Express reader

I know it's not on to mock the afflicted, but looking at Robertz's profile (one of the commenters on the ethnic crisis story) on the Express site gives a fantastic idea of what goes on in the mind of an Express reader. Just looking at the list of his posts shows what probably goes through his head over and over again on a loop:

Baby Boom - Immigrants.
Immigration - Stinks.
Postal Strike.
Paedos.
Maddy Snatched.
Immigrant Baby Boom.
Paris Hilton Ill My Foot.
**Comment removed**
NURSES PAY ROW
Nulabour Wrecked Health Service.
Maddy, Parents.
FAT JOHN.
Crap Olympic Logo.
fat useless John.
Jumping on Popemobile.
Drink Problem.
WHAT ABOUT JOBS FOR THE ENGLISH?
Evil Vile Fraudster
Maddy Appeal on TV.
Comrade Jack Broone, DONATION ROW.

I imagine him muttering these titles over and over, under his breath except the shouty bits:

Man sitting with his eyes half lidded, mumbling mostly unintelligable murmurs under his breath. Ocassionally something's decipherable.
RobertZ (for it is he): Mmmmblmmrurgah...mmmblm....Crap Olympic Logo...mmm...bbbrrrAH! Fat useless John...Jumping on the Popemobile...mmmpopegrrmmph...Drink problem...mmm...drink problem? WHAT ABOUT JOBS FOR THE ENGLISH?
Almighty crash
Driver: GET OFF MY BUS!

You know what's really worrying? He had a comment removed. What could possibly have been so offensive that the mods at the Express Have Your Say section thought was extreme enough to be deleted? The paper leaves up comments calling for the compuslory sterilisation of ethnic minorities!* Jesus!

Have a look through the comments in any Express story about immigration for a tour around some of the enlightened, progressive, forward-thinking minds in the country. That bit was ironic.

*After the second child, of course, which is much more reasonable. Wouldn't want you thinking that commenter was a vile racist who may well be worthy of being called Nazi. The posts on her profile (spaniel_lover) include one with the title, 'Hodge is spot on' though, so I might have to revise that assessment. Thanks. I'm here all week.

The usual kind of tabloid racism. Almost makes you nostalgic

There's a slight return to form for coded racism in today's Express, and another example of the style of coded racism we're used to seeing in the Daily Mail today.

The two stories are 'How a baby boom among migrants is rapidly changing the face of Britain' in the Express, and 'East European influx 'could trigger race riots in villages'' in the Mail.

This is the sort of thing we're used to seeing reported in the right wing press. The Black and Ethnic Minority population isn't usually directly blamed in the same way as Der Sturmer's last effort, which also cringemakingly used the BNP's preferred terminology of 'ethnics' to describe them. Instead we get a proxy group to stand in for them, like asylum seekers or Muslims. It's what we get with these two articles.

First, the Express again on a similar theme to before. This is exactly what we're used to seeing. Migrant baby boom - note the migrant - is what's 'changing the face of Britain', whatever than means. There's a nice picture of some brown people getting on a train to Marseilles. They're going to change us into France!

Anyway, it's just as exaggerated and obfuscatory, trying to distract the reader from smoke and mirrors. The opening is about immigrants 'helping' to push Britain's birth rate up. They still count for less than a quarter. There's a nice little plug for the earlier BNP-esque article, followed by some more nonsense about Mohammed being the second most popular name.

As for the nonsense about that - first of all, it isn't unless you combine all possible spellings. Second of all, Mohammed is an incredibly, incredibly common name among Muslims. How many other traditionally Muslim names are there in the top 100 boy's baby names for England and Wales? Guess, go on. Six? Four? One? No. The answer is none. None more Muslim names. All ninety-seven other names in the top 100 are not Muslim at all. And how many in the girls' names? None again. At all.

But notice the conflation of Muslim with immigrant here. Some of the people called Mohammed might have grandparents born in the UK, but they'll never be British in the Express. Just in case you hadn't made the connection - or rather, the disconnection - between Muslim and British women, the next paragraph is about British women. Nice. I'd like to just address the point about the Muslim birth rate being three times as high. So what? The entire Muslim population of the country stands at less than three percent.

See, there's a nice bit of shifting definitions and figures here. The one fifth of births to mothers born outside the UK doesn not represent the number of Muslim births, and the Muslim birth rate being three times as high as the non-Muslim birth rate does not mean that three times as many babies have been born to Muslim parents. Why doesn't the paper give us a number for the overall proportion of those births? Because it would be too small to scaremonger with.

As is quite common with Express articles, this one contradicts itself just over half way through. Bizarrely, it talks about immigrant birth rates 'changing the face of Britain', then talks about what good news it is that the birth rate is so high, then says:

But experts warned yesterday that the surge in birth rates might be short-lived. They said many migrants from EU countries such as Poland and Romania who came to Britain with their husbands for work, may only stay for a few years to earn a decent wage before returning to their families and friends back home.

Are they changing the face of Britain or not? Make your bloody mind up!

There's one marvellous comment on this article (as long as it's not a wind up). Here are some nice bits:

It has long been said they breed like rabbits and these figures prove it!. [...]
Our own responsible young people are unable to afford a house or flat and these scroungers get it all handed on a plate. This situation is obsene and will destroy this country.[...]
These idiots are very good at spending other peoples money and scounging but very bad at paying their own way!.

You know what? I'd probably think the same if I believed what I read in the Express.

Overall though, this article is the usual confused jumble of opening with a negative conclusion from something they actually can only find positive comments about. It purports to be about the birth rate of immigrants, but it isn't really. It's about Muslims. Muslims are bundled together confusingly with immigration all the time with this paper, usually to hide its dog-whistle stuff, which is why the article I last looked at was so unusual. Except in that it included two women in niqabs to illustrate the theme of ethnic minorities. The caption in this one mentions the Muslim birth rate as well, just to hammer the connection between Muslims and migration home a bit more forcefully.

There is a nice companion piece that goes along with this one : 'Is the scale of migration changing Britain for the worse?' Just so you're not in any doubt of which way to vote, there's a nice illustrative picture of some immgrants (natch - Muslims in niqab). It's the really neutral one that doesn't give a negative impression at all of one niqab-earing Muslim flicking the vs at the camera. Some nice knuckle dragging comments too.

Next, the Mail article. Funny how this one is so similar to the Express one about 'ethnics' breeding like rabbits and causing riots.

The scapegoat du jour is the Eastern European migrant in the Mail, so this article naturally focuses on Eastern Europeans. I suspect that the Mail would have done the same had it covered the report that the Express pretended was about 'ethnics' causing riots. As ever, it misrepresents something that has been said to exaggerate and scaremonger, but whod have thought anything different?

It's also by James Slack, the hack responsible for lots of Eastern European migrant number massaging to exaggerate how many people are currently intent on murdering us in our beds whilst juggling a spirit level and a plunger and riding a unicycle. This is important. Remember it for later.

The full report it claims to be talking about hasn't been published yet, so it's likely the article is based on another one, this time 'Rural towns face risk of community tension flare-ups' from the Local Government Chronicle.

First things first - the article doesn't say an Eastern European influx 'could trigger race riots in villages'. The phrase 'could trigger race riots in villages' doesn't appear anywhere in the article, so this is another example of lying with quotation marks.

I'm sure I don't really need to go through this again with another article, but the one in the Local Government Chronicle doesn't talk about triggering riots in villages at all, in fact. What it does is warn that there's more likely to be tension about migration in areas that aren't used to seeing it, like rural villages. That's a bit of a 'no shit Sherlock' statement and doesn't blame dirty foreigners, so you can see why the Mail couldn't give a straight representation.

The Mail article starts:

Race riots could erupt in rural towns and villages with large numbers of Eastern European immigrants, a Government report will warn.

If the Local Government Chronicle article is anything to go by - no it won't.

Here's the only quote that mentions the likelihood of rioting. It deserves reproducing:

“I think we would all be complacent if we thought tensions would only arise in urban areas, but I don't think we will get a large number of people arriving here at once. I don't think we would anticipate there being rioting on the streets.” [Emphasis mine].

Now look at the Mail headline and opening sentences again.

The only mention it makes of rioting actually taking place is in connection with beered up goons throwing bottles at a Portugese managed pub in Suffolk after England were knocked out of the World Cup. Last time I checked, Portugal wasn't exactly in eastern Europe. I witnessed something similar with some red faced tosser screaming at a bloke in a Portugal shirt at Oxford Circus tube on the same day. 'How can you wear that fucking shirt? You're in the capital of fucking England!' he eloquently slobbered. It wasn't the presence of the Portugese bloke that was to blame though. It was the presence of the shouty red gorilla. Would the Mail blame the Portugese people who managed the pub for making the goons throw bottles?

In fact, we already know. Back in October, there were reports in the press about a riot in Windsor where a Muslim owned dairy was apparently firebombed. In 'Firebombed Muslims 'Asking for it'', I covered how the mail blamed the dairy owners.

The reason I mentioned who wrote the article is to make a small comparison between some figures. In the two misleading articles '1 in 4 Eastern bloc migrants want to stay here for good' and 'One third of all Eastern Europeans want to stay in Britain permanently' (see the difference already, which one's right? Neither of course), James Slack gives a figures of either 160,000 or 157,000 Eastern Europeans who want to stay here permanently, but in this article, he's shifted back to 630,000 without bothering to mention that he thinks that three quarters won't want to stay. Not exactly honest, this bloke, given that he's responsible for triggering the seven part extravaganza 'How the Daily Mail tells lies about immigration'. He's probably the Mail's immigration correspondent or something. If there's not a special room reserved in the ninth circle of hell with that job title on the door, the devil doesn't deserve the name.

So it's the same depressingly familiar situation of articles that distort and misrepresent something someone else has said until it says something that is in fact pretty much the opposite.

It is nice that neither actually blame things on 'ethnics', although their readers will possibly make the connection.

Even so, how can either possibly still be arguing against the BNP, as they do? What is it exactly that differs from their line and the goons' line? I think the papers would be hard pressed to come up with any argument other than, 'We don't like the BNP because . . . because . . . they smell!'

The Express and more Council calling

I've turned into Victor sodding Meldrew. I've phoned two Councils in as many weeks. This time I've called Sheffield Council about the very dodgy article in yesterday's Express. Obsolete has some brilliant coverage of the article, as ever, including links to the report the article is supposedly about, and the local paper article it seems to have been almost directly lifted from. Almost directly. The local article has none of the vicious nonsense about a 'boom' or a 'crisis' or any mention of riots.

Anyway, the press officer was annoyed that the Council had been pretty seriously misrepresented again. One of the most frustrating things, he said, was that around 90% of the things in the article are correct. The Council has produced a report that says some of the things in the article - but hasn't said there are any racial tensions about to bubble over, hasn't said anything about an increase in ethnic minority births leading to rioting, hasn't said anything about rioting at all, hasn't said anything about a 'boom' in ethnic minority births and definitely hasn't characterised the number of ethnic minority births as a crisis.

What it has actually said is that things are actually in pretty good shape in Sheffield and set out a strategy for keeping things that way. See for yourself. Read the report.

One thing he also said is that the Express hadn't seen the report, and must have based its article on the one in the Sheffield Star. We pretty much knew this already, but that's some pretty serious embellishing there. Without even seeing the report, the Express has added references to simmering tensions, riots, and that the number of ethnic minority births represents a crisis.

Since it's clear that neither the Council nor the Sheffield Star have mentioned the number of ethnic minority births as representing either a 'boom' or a 'crisis', not to mention any of the above, we know that these are insertions of the Express. So we know that its the Express who represents a high number of ethnic minority births as a crisis. It's the Express that creates the link between ethnic minority births and rioting. It isn't the case of the paper reporting what someone else has said.

Who else might think a high number of ethnic minority births compared to a low number of white births would represent a crisis? Make a list. Any nice people on it? Or will the BNP be rubbing their hands with glee at getting their party line printed in the national press?

I like the picture the paper uses to illustrate the article. Makes me wonder if Peter Hill goes our on weekends wearing similar attire, but with a more pointy conical hood.

The Express drops all pretence of not being racist

This is, I think, the single most overtly racist article I have ever seen in a national newspaper. I mentioned it in my last, very brief, post but I want to look a bit closer at it. It's 'Ethnic baby boom 'crisis'' from Der Sturmer.

Usually, at least in recent years, the right wing tabloids have coded their racism by hiding it behind the actions of a specific group. The argument went that their coded racism against travellers couldn't be racism because it was about what the people did rather than what they are. Same excuse for anti-asylum seeker stories (with the added level of pretending they were only concerned with non-genuine asylum applicants). Anti-Muslim stories are apparently not racist because Islam is a religion and not a race. The anti-Polish stuff is only aimed at their being immigrants who don't do X, Y or Z - and anyway 'Polish' is a nationality and not a race, so it's not racism. At least, that's how their arguments tend to go.

Here we have an article depicting a crisis based purely on people's ethnic origin. Nothing's hiding it. It's not even pretending to be about foreigners and immigrants. It's saying Ethnic minorities = riots.

The only way I can possibly see that the paper could conceivably be doing anything other than using the standard BNP line on ethnic minorities is that it purports to be about a report that will be presented to Sheffield Council next week that says this stuff. But it desn't give us any idea who produces the report, or any direct quotes from it, making it all but impossible to check. We know from experience how the Express treats reports though. It lies about them. I can't help but suspect that this is why this article has appeared weeks before anyone will actually be able to see for themselves.

I'm finding it difficult to find words to respond to sentences like this one:

Council chiefs fear that unless drastic action is taken, ethnic communities could become increasingly isolated, with Far-Right parties like the BNP becoming increasingly attractive to the city’s disaffected whites.

Which Council chiefs? What have they actually said? Did they use the words 'drastic action'? If they did, did they use it specifically in the context of taking drastic action about the birth of ethnic minorities? I sorely doubt it. It's about as likely as the MCB saying that boys should be covered from navel to neck while swimming.

Here's a new one:

The latest figures show that 13 per cent of Sheffield’s population of 527,000 is now made up of minorities from all races and backgrounds – including a recent influx of thousands of migrants from new EU countries such as Poland and Romania.

While the city’s white population has declined, the number of migrants has more than doubled in the past 15 years and shows no signs of abating, according to the latest predictions.

So now Poles and Romanians aren't white. Remember that if Peter Hill or anyone else claims that Der Sturmer's coverage of Eastern European migration can't be racist because Poles and Romanians are white. This article says they're not.

It gets worse:

From 2001 to 2005, Sheffield’s population was boosted by 4,750 people from a variety of ethnic minorities – from Irish to African and from Chinese to Bangladeshi.

Irish people aren't white now. Irish people. I have heard on a number of occasions that anti-Irish feeling of the 'No blacks, no dogs, no Irish' type isn't actually racist because Irish isn't a race. This paper is clearly more racist than that.

From a fisking point of view, the article does that for itself quite nicely by saying:

Mixed race youngsters are the city’s fastest-growing minority group.

Which kind of shoots its own argument that a high number of ethnic minority births will lead to rioting and unrest.

If anyone wants to try to argue that this article isn't racist, I'd like to see how. Seriously. This is why I think it is, in short:

It blames rioting purely on the number of ethnic minority births.

I don't think I need to say much else.

There must be something that can be done, other than complaining to the useless PCC that can be done about this. It's distressing to see that politics has moved so far to the right that the tabloids can now openly and explicitly attack ethnic minorities without bothering to code their language anymore. And there will no doubt be quite a few goons who try to argue that this article isn't. Just look at the comments on the article.

Thoroughly. Fucking. Scary.

The Daily Express is just racist

If you want an idea of why I've been calling the Daily Express 'Der Sturmer', check out this article 'Ethnic baby boom crisis'.

Nuff said.

More on this later.

The brilliance of the construct of the PC Brigade

There's a fantastic use of the term 'PC Brigade' in today's Mail article 'PC brigade ban pin-ups on RAF jets - in case they offend women and Muslims', which shows how it is used by the right to stifle debate on certain subjects.

What the idea of a PC Brigade does is create a new 'outgroup', so that it's possible to turn an opponents argument into a massive ad-hominem without anybody really noticing. What this means is that instead of debating the merits of a certain action itself, the right can dismiss any opposition argument by classifying the opponent as a member of the PC Brigade outgroup. Because 'PC Brigade' is a pejorative term that has been built up over the years to describe non-existent loonies that do things like banning black bin-liners for being racist (never happened), it implies that any argument ascribed to the PC Brigade is equally as mad. Once you've referred to your opponent as a member of the PC Brigade, their argument is instantly in the category of banning the words 'black coffee' for being racist (never happened).

In this article, the reader is instantly informed that any argument for the removal of nose art from planes is mad before we even get to the articlewith the use of the term 'PC Brigade' in the headline. It's excellent.

What's particularly good about the use of the term here is the effect it has on the rest of the headline. The idea of the PC Brigade banning things so as not to offend Muslims is one we'll be familiar with, from stories like the ones about how Natwest and Halifax banned piggy banks from their advertising so as not to offend Muslim staff and customers (never happened). The headline gives the imression that the 'ban' is so as not to offend women and Muslims within the RAF.

But this isn't the case, and its only after ploughing through fifteen sentence/paragraphs of it has been said that nose art might offend female RAF personnel (along with some history of nose art) that we get to see a glimmer of what the 'offending Muslims' argument might be, and then it's quickly whipped away, never to be seen again in the remaining 6 paragraphs/sentences, all of which talk about offence to female RAF personnel again. Here's the tantalisingly dangled piece of argument:

There was also concern that they could cause offence in a muslim country where until 2001 all women were forced to wear the head-to-toe burkha in public.

Ah. Not Muslim RAF personnel. Muslims in the countries where the RAF is trying to win the hearts and minds of while bombing. With that in mind, it does seem rather daft to be telling the people in Iraq and Afghanistan that we're really in their countries for their own good, representing the system of thought and politics that is really in their best interests - countries where the overwhelming belief in is that women ought to be covered - and bombing them with planes that have pictures of semi-naked women painted on them? Wouldn't that, you know, symbolise one of the things these people hate most about the west? Seems like a really, really bad idea that should have been spotted ages ago.

You can disagree with that argument as much as you like, but I'm sure most on the right hand side of the political fence would think it a far more tenable position to take than saying we ought to ban nose art so as not to offend Muslim RAF personnel, or even female RAF personnel, which is why the argument's buried in the middle of an extended argument against the art being offensive to women.

I suspect that what's happened here is that a far longer argument from the 'RAF spokesman' than is reproduced in the article exists and the paper have only given us an extended direct quotation of one aspect of it. A bit like how Littlejohn took an explanation for the scrapping of a November 5 bonfire in Watford, removed references to there being a number of reasons for it and then focused on what he thought was the waeker argument as the main one. Either way, there is definitely more than one argument here, and the one that actually argues a practical Military reason is effectively buried at the expense of a more overtly political point Notice that there's no direct quotation, so the paper can add its own spin, mentioning offending Muslims. The 'PC Brigade' label is used to cast further doubt on the more practical argument.

Contrast this article with the way the Mail has covered Channel 4's decision to screen the documentary about Diana's death, including pictures of the aftermath of the crash. Here, we have people trying to censor something so as not to offend people. People in a minority of two. Are Princes William and Harry part of the 'PC Brigade' though?

I'll give you three guesses.