Police Accuse Channel 4 of “distortion”
08.08.07 - 01:46pm
A truly surprising development today concerning January’s Dispatches documentary which claimed to expose bigotry, hatred and “extremism” in some of Britain’s prominent mosques.
After investigating three speakers filmed by journalists and broadcast in the Undercover Mosque programme, West Midlands Police have concluded that the documentary “completely distorted” what the speakers said and have now taken the extraordinary step of reporting Channel 4 to the regulator, Ofcom.
According to the BBC today:
CPS lawyer Bethan David considered 56 hours of media footage of which only a part was used in the programme. She said: “The splicing together of extracts from longer speeches appears to have completely distorted what the speakers were saying.
“The CPS has demonstrated it will not hesitate to prosecute those responsible for criminal incitement.
“But in this case we have been dealing with a heavily edited television programme, apparently taking out of context aspects of speeches which in their totality could never provide a realistic prospect of any convictions.”
The Channel 4 website for the documentary, still active, describes it thus: “A Dispatches reporter attends mosques run by organisations whose public faces are presented as moderate and finds preachers condemning integration into British society, condemning democracy and praising the Taliban for killing British soldiers.”
I watched the programme and it did indeed appear to show instances of bigotry and hatred, although nothing more serious than you would find expressed in your local pub, or on any number of online media and political discussion forums , or indeed in a not insignificant numbers of Christian churches or synagogues around the world, targeting Muslims and Arabs.
In a statement Channel 4’s Gavin Dawson said:
“We believe the offensive views expressed by the people revealed in the programme speak for themselves. We didn’t put these words into people’s mouths and all extracts were carefully contextualised. The West Midlands Police have provided no evidence whatsoever to support their allegations.”
Nevertheless, it is highly unusual, if not unique, for the police to refer a broadcaster to the industry regulator and one wonders what they found when they viewed the entire 56 hours of film footage.
Channel 4 owes us an explanation. And a transcript would be a good place to start.
Curious indeed.
That Channel Four should appeal to a racist common denominator is obviously of no surprise, but that the police are bothering about it is. Perhaps it was Dispatches that led them to investigate the Mosques in the first place, and they’re annoyed at having to waste time? Or else that they want to get at C4 for some other reason and this is mud that they expected to stick? Or that it is distortion of such a degree that they felt unable to justify letting it go?
They must feel, at least, that it’s bad enough for them to have a case, but from the direct quotes provided it doesn’t look too good for the Mosques - unless every one was proceeded by “some people, not me, but some people…” or some such disclaimer. Then again, I can’t help but wonder if this is distortion-by-mistranslation rearing its ugly head once more; were all the quotes taken from sermons in English or might it be Urdu or Punjabi or something? I hope the story doesn’t sink below the radar, as it all seems quite intriguing.
I’m sorry to hear that you find Undercover Mosque to be racist or be changing the truth,
I ‘ve seen the documentary and it is very well balanced, it quotes official statements and inside videos of the mosques.
and by the way Islam is not a race, it is a religion.
Just try to think how it sounds if you reverse whats happening in london.
Christians on a Church in Iran saying that Muslims should be killed, that their governments will fall by infiltration from within, Muslims will converted with crusades and that the sooner it happens the better, and that Christianity will rule the world,
then relize how offensive those mullahs are.
Actually, I am keeping pretty much an open mind at the moment. Watching the news today the guy from Channel 4 did seem genuinely mystified by this move by the police. I shall be interested to see how this plays out.
“Just try to think how it sounds if you reverse whats happening in london.
Christians on a Church in Iran saying that Muslims should be killed, that their governments will fall by infiltration from within, Muslims will converted with crusades and that the sooner it happens the better, and that Christianity will rule the world”
As I pointed out in the original article, there are elements among the world’s Christian community who speak in exactly this way. It certainly goes on in the US among the more fundamentalist churches and the manner of discussing homosexuals and women is strikingly similar to that portrayed in the Dispatches documentary. Irrational, religious bigotry is to be condemned no matter who says it and I am not sure that location is a particularly relevant issue.
That old chestnut! Tell me, Seriously, do you think race is a coherent anthropological concept? Is the division of humanity into discrete classes based on skin colour a fact of nature that we’d be fools to ignore? I think not. The only real race is the human race, anything else is created by the racist - and if he discriminates by religion rather than skin colour or eye-shape, does it make the tiniest jot of difference? Islamophobia is racist, as is anti-Semitism or gingerism.
Doctored video is doctored video. You are correct to be skeptical.
It’s technically correct that Islam is a religion, not a race. Let’s not kid ourselves, that the shows targets don’t have brown skin.