Islam4UK provocateurs inflame public opinion with help of UK media

Tuesday, 05 January 2010 10:46

Revelling in the kind of publicity money can’t buy Islam4UK appears to have scored another media coup with its shameful proposed march on Wootton Bassett, (see The Times, Daily Telegraph, Daily Star, The Guardian, Daily Mail and BBC News).

The group posted the proposed march on its website, along with an open letter to the families of servicemen and women. And despite the fact that the group posts no details of the date of the proposed march, and the fact that its march on Trafalgar Square in support of shari’ah law was cancelled at the last minute, false exaggerations of 5,000 people lining up to join the demo notwithstanding, newspapers have been falling over themselves to give the group the sort of media coverage it neither deserves nor warrants.

The Daily Star, revealing its partiality for broad brushstrokes journalism asks readers ‘Should the Islam march be banned?’

Note that the paper terms it the ‘Islam march’ and not the ‘Islam4UK march’.

It’s tiresome to lambast those newspapers and broadcasters that seem to fall for Islam4UK’s publicity stunts every time but it is necessary to ask why this group enjoys so much attention with little effort expended to source opinions from the many British Muslim organisations that would rightly contextualize the negligible significance of this group and its history of causing provocation. What will it take for newspapers and broadcasters to act more responsibly and consign these troublemakers to the dust heap, just as they deserve?

We would have expected the BBC to rise above newspaper sensationalism and exercise more restraint than offer Anjem Choudary's gang of misfits two feature items on the BBC website. More so since the corporation took no pains to include opinions from any mainstream Muslim organisation who find Islam4UK's stunts utterly reprehensible.

The BBC's editorial guidelines oblige it to: 'reflect a breadth and diversity of opinion across our output as a whole, over an appropriate period, so that no significant strand of thought is knowingly unreflected or under represented'.

In the case of Islam4UK one might well conclude that the BBC has indulged in over representation.

You can tell the BBC what you think of this irresponsible use of your licence fee money via email, or phone - 03700 100 222.

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