in November, an allegation that was reported with much fanfare across all the BBC’s various media at the time, complete with the inference that it was somehow fall-out from Jack Straw’s comments about veiled Muslim women. Even Lothian & Borders Police were inspired to previosuly unknown efforts investigating this ‘crime’.
Fortunately, the lads and lasses in blue eventually winkled out the truth, Sikh teen lied about hair attack, though strangely this was reported with very much less fanfare, almost in passing, on Sunday December 24th, when most of the nation were otherwise distracted by Christmas Eve.
I meant to blog about this at the time, but of course got distracted. The fact that even the normally eagle-eyed Laban missed this denouement shows just how pernicious the effect of the BBC’s disparity in reporting the outcome of this case has been. That, and the strange one way effect where a story like this was widely reported throughout the UK, whereas the vicious racist murder of poor Kriss Donald in Glasgow was, for a long time, barely reported by the BBC outside of Scotland. Strange that.
Even now, BBC Views Online’s archive contains the original stories without any hint of links forward to the eventual truth. This is a serious deficiency that would of course be addressed were the Beeboids professional enough to take up my long called for suggestions for automatic forward linking of related stories – beyond a small piece of programming it would require no further effort on their part to implement such a major improvement to their quest to tell the truth.
Were the Beeboids ever to feel that seriously professional, instead of being defensive and deficient, they might also take up my other suggestion, also relatively easy to implement, of Wikipedia style article revision histories, to once and for all address the issue of stealth editing – no more doubt, no more allegations of impropriety, just the sort of reasonable professional scrutiny that reasonable professionals would welcome. But then we are talking about publicly-subsidised BBC hacks. Never mind.
I don’t think the BBC consider if their job to be objective. If they had to present revision histories and automatic forward linking then their propagandising would be plain to see.
I cannot see that it is reasonable to have state broadcaster at all in 2006. It is time for the whole edifice to be dismantled.
Seeing as the BBC can’t be asked to report this horric racist attack on the national scene. Please allow pounce to do so;
BBC (Wilts version)
Schoolboy ‘attacked with hammer’
Eight men have been arrested following a violent attack on a schoolboy in Wroughton in Wiltshire.
The 15-year old pupil at the Ridgeway school was allegedly hit with a hammer as he left after classes just before 1600 GMT on Thursday.
The teenager, who has not been named, was taken to the Great Western Hospital where he is been treated for head injuries. His parents are at his side.
The incident happened as scores of children were leaving to go home.
A source said the boy had been held down and hit with a hammer by the family of another pupil at the school.
The eight men are being held at Gable Cross Police Station in Swindon.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/wiltshire/6253449.stm
Guaridan national version;
Suspects questioned over school hammer attack
Sarah Bridge and agencies
Friday January 12, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
Police were today continuing to question eight men over a hammer attack on a 15-year-old boy at his school in Wiltshire yesterday.
Police made the arrests after the white pupil, who suffered head injuries, was attacked by a group of Asian men at Ridgeway school in Wroughton, near Swindon.
Some parents of pupils at the school today voiced fears that the attack had been racially motivated.
“I’ve heard there’s been some racial problems between the white kids and the Asian kids,” one father said as he stopped outside the school gates to drop off his 15-year-old. “I hope this doesn’t kick something off.”
Last May, police said they would send extra patrols to the area after teenagers leaving the school were beaten up by a gang of men.
The headmaster, Steve Colledge, said a similar incident had happened at the school before he took charge in September, but added that race relations between pupils were generally good.
The boy’s injuries are not thought to be life-threatening. He remains in the Swindon Great Western hospital, where police said he was “conscious and comfortable”.
Parents have spoken of their shock after the attack. One mother, who did not want to be named, said: “It’s incredible this could happen on school grounds in broad daylight … it’s horrific.”
Mr Colledge said the incident had left pupils and parents “stunned”. He was on patrol in the school grounds when a gang of at least four men jumped out of a car and attacked the boy on the tennis courts just before 4pm yesterday.
The headmaster said he understood the victim had been hit more than once but had remained conscious at all times and was able to help get himself onto a stretcher.
“Clearly, it’s such a shocking incident and everybody has been very helpful in identifying the perpetrators to police,” he added. “The car was quickly identified and given to the police, who I believe have now detained eight men.
“When [the boy] was at the school, he was speaking and able to tell us what had happened, and we were able to talk to him.”
Mr Colledge said counselling would be offered to pupils who had witnessed the incident.
He added that he had heard the attackers were relatives of a pupil at the school. “If that’s the case, I think it’s even more sad,” he said, urging pupils to respond “responsibly and sensibly” to what had happened. The attack came as Ridgeway celebrated being rated as one of the top schools in Wiltshire, with 73% of its pupils achieving grades A to C at GCSE. “We started the morning in elation … but we ended the day in tragedy,” Mr Colledge said.
http://education.guardian.co.uk/schools/story/0,,1989056,00.html
OK, serious face, no funny stuff, not being sarcastic, and I’m not having a ‘dig’ at anyone.
Mr Reith – please, do you happen to know the official line of why this story isn’t being given more prominence?
“Move along there, nothing to see”.
It seems that the Police the BBC and other media outlets are intentionally suppressing the racial aspect of ethnic on white crime ( with phrases like, “its too early to say if racism was involved” etc etc, especially from the police)when only to ready to highlight it in huge lights when the other way round, it will only change when people start shouting from the rooftops, “I was attacked because I was white”. On the other hand I would hold my breath. Any race crime is wrong but my opinion is that there is something very dangerous going on in the UK in the way crime and other issues are presented and reported by public bodies and a lot of the media when it comes to minorities.
Call me cynical but I doubt we’ll see Mr Reith commenting on this thread – unless it’s to criticise pounce for the odd spelling mistake.
You wait until the big paedophile ring that was recently broken up in Oldham comes to trial later this year.
The BBC are going to have to go into contortions to avoid reporting the extremely unpleasant racial overtones of that case.
There may well be very awkward questions the Government, the media and the Police have to answer as well. Questions like, “What did you know, and when did you know it”.
It really does take some finding.
-Nothing on the Main Page.
-Nothing on the World Page
-Nothing on the UK Page
-Hidden ‘below the fold’ on the England Page:
http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y179/grimerking/HammerAttack.jpg
Boy Blue, in all likelihood itll be a religius overtone that they’ll make the most pains to avoid regarding certain possible memberships of The Religion of Peace™. Of course if they’d been catholic the BBC would be screaming it from the rooftops already…
archonix | Homepage | 12.01.07 – 9:40 pm |
indded
i will suggest that “paedophile catholics” is a phrase neither more nor less valid than “islamic honour killing” or “islamic [or muslim](male) paedophilia” but apparently the latter two phrases are verboten on the bbc
i am becoming increasingly convinced that while there is an official bbc diversity tsar(in), there is also unofficially a bbc islam(ic)(ist) tsar.
and the (in) is not omitted accidentally
allahu akbar and sieg heil
yes, reith, i know, ‘indded’ should have been ‘indeed’
It all works like a mantra to the Beeb leftie middle class. Say the weather god will punish us with a warm year in 2007, this will make George Bush will sign Kyoto; say minorities are being attack by working class whites (y’knw the the ones that go to costa in carbon belching jets) then these white liberals think they’re safe from attack from the the minorities they patronisinlgy think they defend.
I nearly fell off my chair in laughter last night watching the ITV news at 6.30 when the hammer attack was presented, the presenter when talking about the white parents who were concerned for their chldren said “that they say was a racist attack”, well have you ever heard a racist attack in reverse being described in these terms ? I dont think so as white on ethnic attacks are presented from the start as racist, something stinks from on high if you didnt know by now.
I was aware that the Sikh attack turned out to be a fabrication, hence the use of the word ‘reported attack’. It was still relevant as it illustrates the way the BBC reports an attack by ‘the majority community’ i.e. upfront about the ethnicities of perps and victim.
Further to Laban’s post above, it also demonstrates the blind, wilfull ignorance of the newswriters. The notion that a Sikh – a completely different religion – would be attacked for some utterly lunatic reason, by someone who resented Jack Straw’s remarks about the niqab is a stretch way, way too far. It does, however, point out the deep, condescending racism at the BBC. Muslims, in the main, and Sikhs are brown, therefore, so they must have a lot in common, including grudges.
And then, of course, it turned out that the Sikh kid had lied, so that got buried in a big hurry.