The Institutional Racism of the British Media
It might be argued that the prevailing silence from the British media about the continuing state-murder of unarmed civilians in Gaza, Palestine can be excused on the basis that these deaths are occuring a long way away. People die all round the world every day and the British media must be primarily concerned with stories of interest to British viewers, some would say. Xenophobic and condescending to the British people, certainly. Technically poor journalism to any media accademic.
Comparing coverage of other deaths, however, suggests instead a deep and pernicious racism.
The BBC, on it’s News Channel, broadcast a full twenty minutes on the 7th April 2018 covering the deaths of three people in Muenster, Germany. The fatalities were victims of an apparently deliberate van attack with some 20 others injured. The BBC report went into great detail about the context. We were told how beautiful was the medieval town, how it had two universities and how the people of the town had a close relationship with the students and professors. It was explained that on the first warm day of spring, citizens of Muenster were out and about, enjoying the sunshine, drinking coffee and beer and enjoying the company of their friends.
The point being made, carefully, consciously and with an indulgance of broadcast minutes, was that people, the good people of Muenster, were civilised, cultured and nice; too nice to have this terrible crime committed against them. They were people, in other words, like us. People to empathise with, in whose grief we should share and whose outrage we should transfer to ourselves. The context was also and without the slightest evidence, broadened to include other attacks in Europe known to have been conducted by Muslims. Having prepared us for a feeling of solidarity we are reminded that the primary threat to Europe, to it’s version of democracy and it’s civilized, liberal values is not from the indiginous and resurgent far right but from the other; those outside Europe, if not always physically, always culturally, always Muslim.
By co-incidence the piece on Muenster was followed by a report on fatalities in a Canadian Ice Hockey team, from Humboldt, in a road traffic accident. The same careful preparation of the humanity of the victims was performed with ages, aspirational details and family bereavement emphasised; these are deaths you should care about.
From the criminal Israeli war against Gazan civilians in 2014 to the cold, deliberate execution of men, women and children by pitiless murderers-in-uniform during the current Great March of Return, the BBC’s delivery, if it has existed at all, has been rather different.
The News Channel website, today 7th April 2018, over a week after the event, has a 54 second video report for the 30th March 2018, the day that 17 Palestinian civilians were murdered by Israeli forces, entitled Gaza-Israel border: Clashes ‘leave 16 Palestinians dead and hundreds injured'.
From the headline we are immediately invited to view the number of deaths reported with suspicion. There is no narration, the deaths of those 16 (17) people do not merit the reassuring condolence of a human voice. There is a series of written statements: the numbers reported injured, by either side, the stated reasons for the violence, the weapons used, the reason for the demonstration and the length of the Gaza border with Israel. It is a simple, callous and cold summary lasting less than 3 seconds per human life lost with none of the warmth, none of the empathy-generating details, none of the humanity reserved for Muenster and Humboldt.
Most shockingly and despite accepting the fact in the title, the short clip doesn’t even mention that people have been killed, simply stating that live fire was used. In fact people are not referred to at all. Instead those human beings are referred to as the Palestinians, as if the number of another species was being considered. In the same way, in fact, that Fascists in Hitler’s Germany carefully avoided any reference to Jewish people, always talking simply of Jews, as if Jews were not people and their mention should not emote facets of humanity. The same way that slavers demoted African people to Negroes because whilst human beings cannot be treated as animals, Negroes can.
The willing perpetrators of vicious, cynical smears of racism against life-long anti-racists in the Labour Party and elsewhere are themselves harbouring deep-seated prejudice. In the guise of championing progressive values and through their self-apointed role as defenders of all that is decent the British media, led into the sewer by the BBC, are upholding the racism of empire, colonisation and military control.
