Quality Reporting (ii)

[caddyman]

Last Thursday, Armistice Day, there was a news report amongst the general coverage of the commemorations, of a group of Muslim youths who held their own little demonstration during which they burnt a large poppy and "screamed insults" about British war dead. The Sun has tracked them down and named them.

The Ahmadiyya Muslim Youth Association  raised nearly £21,000 for the Royal British Legion by selling poppies at railway stations over a 13 hour period on 1 November 2010.

One of these events makes the headlines, the other a mention in an opinion column. Guess which is which?

Comments

[caddyman.livejournal.com]

The point is that Muslims tend to get the negative headlines and that colours people's views of that community.

Yes, the Sun does mention the good work done by the youth community, but not as a newsworthy item, just in an opinion piece. It's not worth a headline to them. I venture to suggest that if a working class pub group raised £20k for the RBL, they would get a favourable mention somewhere.

[ginasketch.livejournal.com]

The point is that Muslims tend to get the negative headlines and that colours people's views of that community.

You pretty much said what I was going to say.

[keith-london.livejournal.com]

It's not really the publics' fault that some (so-called) muslims get "negative headlines" - since those seem to go out of their way to try and get it - for example the extremist "muslims" who wanted to stage a protest at Wooten Bassett. Or perhaps the ultimate "negative headline" must have been British born "muslims" carrying out London's 7/7 attacks. Even then we are conditioned not to have our views coloured of the muslims as a whole - which must be the right way.

If anything, we are perhaps not told the whole picture sometimes because of political correctness. For example, the BBC (i.e. on their TV news) seemed to avoid telling us that "muslim" protestors held out banners saying "Timms go to hell" in support of the nutcase (another supposedly devout muslim) who stabbed him twice and nearly killed him.

The point about "negative headlines" must be - negative as they are, we need to be aware of such incidents, and we need to see them in perspective. Poppy burning seems to be a new low in this country. It reflects badly on those who do it. Not necessarily on the wider community (unless that community condones it - which I don't believe it does.)