Thursday 5 November 2009

How the Mail and Sun reported the Nick Griffin court case

On Monday, the Daily Mail was reporting on the case of Tauriq Khalid, who was in court accused of racially abusing and threatening to kill BNP leader Nick Griffin. It appeared in the first section of the Mail website homepage, as one of their top stories, like this:

On the actual article, in the blue bar at the top of the screen, the 'court hears' bit is missing. Moreover, the headline has been changed to:

Yes, it's partly in quote marks - a favourite tabloid get-out to attribute to someone else a statement they believe - but there is still something very definite about the phrasing. Probaby because in the toss up between a Muslim and a white racist, the Mail would always side with the latter.

Khalid said he called Griffin a 'fucking wanker' and aimed a V-sign in his direction.

Griffin said Khalid called him a 'white bastard', made a gun with his fingers and, according to the BNP leader:

He shouted out, "Griffin, you bastard. I am going to..." but I didn't at the time catch it. But I took it as to "kill" or "shoot you"

So he admitted in court he didn't actually hear the alleged death threat.

The jury took a whole 45 minutes to find Khalid not guilty. Which means a court has listened to something Griffin had to say and didn't believe him. Imagine that.

But how did the Mail react to the news that Khalid was cleared of racist abuse?

Firstly, they couldn't even be bothered to give a named journalist the assignment. Rather than James Tozer, who wrote the original story, 'Daily Mail Reporter' did it instead.

Secondly, the story has not been on the Mail homepage at all today and wasn't last night either - in complete contrast to the high positioning of the 'claims'.

Thirdly, the headline on the article is this:


Notice how the possibly guilty 'Muslim' from the original has become an innocent 'Asian'. In fact, the word 'Muslim' is not used once in the entire article about the verdict. Can the Mail not bring itself to think a Muslim man might not be guilty of something? Or is it that Khalid is not in fact Muslim? None of the other newspaper stories about the verdict identify him as such - in which case why did the Mail claim he was in the original headline?

The differences between the two articles and the prominence given to them is stark. And, sadly, unsurprising.

Still, at least they covered the end of the case in some form. On the Sun's website, Griffin's claims were reported, but the verdict hasn't been mentioned at all.

3 comments:

  1. What's the difference between the Daily Mail and far right nationalism?

    Oh wait..

    ReplyDelete
  2. The weirdest thing about this story was the comments on the Mail site (I don't know whether they're still up, they take comments down a lot of the time these days).
    Some gems from the comments board;
    'One law for them and no law for the public seems to fit the system we have now.'
    'Well what a surprise. Has anyone been convicted of anti-white racism in this country, at all? It does go on, no doubt about that.'

    I can only assume they can't read. The slightly more sane commenters who have tried to point out that he was found innocent for the simple reason that he was innocent have been given up to 1000 red arrows.

    It seems these people do not want to hear the truth, if it doesn't fit in with their (awful) views.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I think it's fair to assume the comments have been taken over by the BNP crowd.

    ReplyDelete

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