Case A: thugs attack en masse at a beach in Portugal. The race of the attackers was not mentioned by the BBC, although the prim way that the story says that the municipal authorities believed that
“the youngsters came from poorer suburbs of the capital”
made me guess that they were not white before Tim Worstall, who lives in Portugal, confirmed it. The fact that they were black was the aspect of the story everyone in Portugal, where race relations are generally good, was talking about. In failing to report it the BBC were failing to tell the story properly.
Case B: thugs attack en masse at a beach in Sydney. In the BBC story the race of attackers and victims appears in the very first line:
“Thousands of young white men have converged on Cronulla Beach in Sydney, Australia, and attacked people of Arabic and Mediterranean background.”
Why does this difference in reporting matter? If, as I maintain, race should make no difference to our condemnation of criminal violence, why is is it a big deal that the BBC mentions race in one case and not in another?
Because – and I make no apologies for repeating my line from the coverage of the Lozells riots – one of the major spurs to mob violence is rumour. And rumour flourishes where people believe that they are not being told the whole truth. In cases of racially charged violence people are correct to believe that the British Broadcasting Corporation and culturally similar organisations like the Australian Broadcasting Corporation are often not telling the whole truth.
While flicking through various websites a few days ago I came across this post from Romeo Mike, an Australian blogger. Having seen it, the riots were not such a surprise to me. The author describes the incident that was the flashpoint for the riots: the beating up of two white lifeguards by immigrants of Lebanese origin. He quotes the Australian Daily Telegraph.
The Telegraph article says:
Surf Lifesaving Sydney rescue services manager Stephen Leahy said it was common for Middle Eastern men from western Sydney to taunt Cronulla surf lifesavers by stealing their equipment, making idle threats and kicking balls at them.
Some regular Cronulla beachgoers said that the behaviour of Middle Eastern groups was so offensive, they opted to travel to other beaches instead.
The BBC report linked to earlier did allude to this history. I shouldn’t laugh at such a time, but I couldn’t help being amused to see the BBC’s latest “youngsters from poorer suburbs” euphemism for “non-white thugs” popping up again:
“[Cronulla beach] is often visited by young people from the poorer suburbs of western and southern Sydney.
Area residents accuse the visitors of being disrespectful and of sometimes intimidating other beach-goers. ”
In the days following the attack on the lifeguards, white thugs, fully as vicious as their Lebanese-origin equivalents, passed around inflammatory text messages and emails and set a time and place to take revenge on any Arabic-looking person unfortunate enough to stray into their path. It is a grim fact that the blogosphere motto popularised by Instapundit, “A pack, not a herd” can apply to the bad as well as to the good.
I think it is significant that Romeo Mike, writing on December 6 before these riots happened, says that with the exception of the Australian Telegraph, the Australian media had either been silent about the simmering problems or had downplayed the race angle. The ABC had not mentioned the beating of the lifeguards at all.
The Australian and British Broadcasting Corporations have much in common. Both need to become aware that the small risk to public order involved in reporting the races involved in racially charged crimes in all cases, not just those conforming to their worldview, is much outweighed by the large risk to public order involved in allowing a news vacuum to form around sensitive incidents. Into that vacuum rumour and paranoia will inevitably flow.
Most race riots have an alleged inter-racial attack as the flashpoint. Where the allegation is untrue – for instance the alleged multiple rape that started the Birmingham riots, for which no evidence has ever been found – then it is the duty of the media to quell the rumours. It can only do this effectively if it is trusted and it can only be trusted if it has built up a record of trustworthy behaviour. Where the allegation is true then it is the duty of the media to calm the situation by making it clear that the police are making every effort to bring the criminals to justice. If the media don’t do this then lawless elements will fill the gap themselves, with their sort of “reports” and their sort of “justice.”
(Tim Blair has more on the Sydney violence.)
UPDATE: I see these riots have already been discussed extensively in the comments to the previous post. Commenter Susan pointed out that in this story, “Second night of riots hits Sydney”, the BBC reporting has the same imbalance as before. It seems that, in revenge for the events in Cronulla on Sunday, people of Lebanese origin have gone into that and neighbouring suburbs and thrown bricks. The BBC does not report the race of the perpetrators. However, in the same story, it does manage to remind us, twice, that “thousands of young white men” were behind Sunday’s riots. Susan writes, “Notice how MinTruth doesn’t give any racial or ethnic identifier for the thugs currently destroying cars and throwing bricks in Mabroubra and Brighton-le-Sands (Sydney suburbs). That’s your infaliable Orwellian clue to the actual ethnic identity of the thugs.”
ANOTHER UPDATE: In deference to the good point made by commenter PJF, I should amend the above to say that it is the duty of the media to report that the police are making every effort to bring the criminals to justice so long as the police are, in fact, making every effort. PC though the PCs are these days, I think they generally do make strenuous efforts when it comes to serious crimes. The point I was trying to make was that media silence is dangerous.
FINAL UPDATE: The “Second night of riots” story has since been stealth edited to include a paragraph saying “Some of the violence appeared to have been carried out by youths of Middle Eastern appearance, raising speculation it was a retaliation for Sunday’s unrest.” There have been similar interpolations in other BBC stories about the riots, as Toby points out in his post of 15 December. These changes are a good thing, but they should be done openly. Perhaps the BBC was influenced by blogs, or by the fact that Tim O’Neill’s comment on this forum (“surely the BBC should be actually reporting what is happening, not picking and choosing”) was recommended by so many people.
