More UK Media Hypocrisy
I hold no brief for Metropolitan Police commissioner Sir Ian Blair – in fact I think he is purely Tony Blair’s creature, a political appointee who does what he’s told by No. 10. But on the issue of institutionalised racism in the media he is spot on. Even the South African media think so:
UK media called racist
Sir Ian Blair, London’s Metropolitan Police Commissioner, has accused the media of “institutional racism” over the way it reports murders, according to a report in the Telegraph.
Sir Ian said that murders in minority communities appeared “not to interest the mainstream media”, and added that he could not understand why the Soham murders attracted so much attention.
He highlighted the recent “terrible” case of 31-year-old lawyer Tom ap Rhys Price, who was stabbed to death as he walked home from a tube station. On the same day Balbir Matharu, an Asian man, was dragged to his death by two car stereo thieves but received little press coverage in comparison.
“I actually believe that the media is guilty of institutional racism in the way they report deaths,” said Sir Ian.
“That death of the young lawyer was terrible, but an Asian man was dragged to his death, a woman was chopped up in Lewisham, a chap shot in the head in a Trident murder – they got a paragraph on page 97.
Given the choice between a Black and a White (preferably female and teenage) murder victim, the latter will be reported where the former will not. this holds true not just for the tabloids but for the BBC and the broadsheets.
‘Missing white female’ trumps all other news, always.
I am a white female and even I can see that. For reporters and editors of whatever media outlet to act as though they have been accused of individual acts of racism is either disingenuous, or demonstrates their lack of understanding of how institutional racism comes about.
If it’s the case that they don’t understand what instutionalised racism is, then they shouldn’t be employed as reporters or editors – to be so ignorant of what affects a significant proportion of the population daily is no basis for holding themselves out as informational gatekeepers to the rest of us.
My own elder son went missing for 3 weeks when he was 13. I was frantic: the police didn’t care, the local papers weren’t interested, there was nothing I could do but wait and worry. ( he came back, but subsequent events are another story entirely).
A couple of months later a white girl the same age went missing – huge fuss, pictures all over the front page, reports all over the news, police out with dogs and helicopters. She was found in 3 days at a friends house.
Needless to say my son is Black, and the the girl was white.
Don’t tell me there’s no such thing as institutionalised racism in the media, or anywhere else for that matter.
