GB News accounted for half of all news broadcast coverage of Muslims over a two-year period, much of it negative, according to new analysis.
The findings demonstrate an “excessive” focus on Muslims bordering on an “obsession”, according to a new report by the Centre for Media Monitoring (CfMM).

Researchers alleged the stories about Islam are “overwhelmingly negative” and fail to understand the diverse nature of Muslim communities in the UK.
They said the coverage could fuel community tensions and contribute to civil unrest.

Sayeeda Warsi described the research as “shocking”, while former ITN executive and Ofcom regulator, Stewart Purvis, said the findings raised vital questions for the broadcasting regulator.

The two-year analysis found that GB News mentioned Muslims or Islam more than 17,000 times in its output, which they say accounted for almost 50% of total mentions on UK news channels. BBC News and Sky News accounted for 32% and 21% respectively.

The report found that GB News was particularly focused on domestic stories on these topics in comparison with its rival channels, where foreign news contributed a greater amount to their output.

It also alleged that Muslims and their beliefs are often presented on GB News as part of a conspiracy to undermine Britain or the British way of life. This takes the form of depicting Muslims as a Trojan horse in the UK.

According to the findings, Islamophobia was referenced on GB news on 1,180 occasions, accounting for 60% of all mentions when compared with BBC News and Sky News. The researchers said the stories were overwhelmingly critical of the concept of Islamophobia.

During last summer’s riots, GB News accounted for 62% of all clips on UK news channels that associated Muslims with the riots. Researchers allege that GB News repeatedly framed Muslims as “perpetrators rather than victims of violence”, pushed disinformation, and that the channel “downplayed attacks on mosques and Muslim communities”.

The report also notes that GB News were particularly animated by the idea of ‘two-tier’ policing, airing debates which questioned whether police responses were harsher towards certain groups, such as white working-class Britons, while allegedly being more lenient towards Muslim communities.

Lady Warsi said: The consistent stereotyping and stigmatization of British Muslim communities as the “enemy” or the “problem” by a platform with millions of viewers is deliberate, dangerous and has real life consequences. Seeing the impact of far-right radicalization with the alarming year-on-year rise in anti-Muslim hatred, culminating in this summer’s riots where mosques and Muslim communities were openly targeted, should have been a wakeup call for all.

“It is imperative that both the regulator and the government take decisive action to ensure broadcasting platforms are not used to fuel hatred and extremism that plays out as violent disorder on the streets of Britain.”

Purvis, who also wrote a commentary in the report, said the findings raise questions for Ofcom: “Has its deregulated model for broadcast news created an unintended consequence? Can a broadcaster be allowed to try to build its audience and political influence by a consistently negative portrayal of an ethnic community?”

Rizwana Hamid, the director of CfMM, said: “Prior to GB News entering the British media landscape most of our attention was focused on the misrepresentation of Muslims and Islam in print and online publications given that Ofcom’s broadcast regulations were always more robust than the press regulator IPSO. However, the volume of anti-Muslim hate on GB News and Ofcom’s reluctance to regulate its harmful content has meant that politicians and commentators have been give carte blanche to malign Muslims and Islam in a way that no other channel does.

“A robust regulator should demand that the channel performs according to long-established codes for broadcasters and enforce impartiality regulations.”

A GB News spokesperson said: “This inaccurate and defamatory report is nothing more than a cynical, self-serving attempt to silence free speech. It proves exactly why a news organization like GB News needs to exist and why it is succeeding. We are concerned that at no point did this project of the Muslim Council of Britain contact GB News or its presenters to allow them to respond to these highly defamatory allegations.”

Source: The Guardian

Those who choose an occupation where all things Muslims are read and watched, know that this was not someone off.

Nigel Farage, bought the daily fodder of GB News on to mainstream news even eliciting shock and some pushback from Sky News host Trevor Philips.

Those who have followed the trajectory of Islamophobia in Britain spotted the irony with Phillips having similarly opined just several years earlier that “Muslims see the world differently from the rest of us” and are becoming a “nation within a nation”.

But as the US based journalist Mehdi Hasan writes, “It’s difficult to imagine any British media outlet allowing a sweeping bigoted dishonest rant like this about any other minority community in the UK. Just change the word ‘Muslim’ to ‘Jew’ and ask yourself if the host would have been so friendly and conciliatory in his response.” Before any debate is had the answer we all know is a firm, no.

This is general election season and the non-Parliamentary candidate has been given prime air time on the biggest News channels including the BBC, to not only repeat his mantra of immigration is bad, but to single out Muslims as particularly so.

The BBC this week attempted to explain why Farage is so relevant saying in the nineteenth paragraph of its story that the Reform UK president singling out Muslims was merely “accusations of Islamophobia”, and that the man who has stood seven times for a Parliamentary seat and been rejected by voters each time, added “excitement” to the general election campaign.

It says something about the acceptability of Islamophobia when the national broadcaster finds excitement in what many consider out and out racism against one community.

Perhaps that is what journalism in Britain has now become, titillation and controversy for hacks and news directors and not the serious issues which ought to be the focus of election coverage. As the long time political editor of the Daily Mirror Kevin Maguire said: “Nigel Farage would be cancelled if he said that about British Jews. But somehow Islamophobia is acceptable in certain quarters.”

Enter Ofcom, a broadcast regulator tasked with making sure that “viewers and listeners are protected from harmful or offensive material on TV, radio and on-demand”. Except it seems, if you are Muslim.

The visceral reaction of Britain’s media and the anti-Muslim contingent amongst its commentarial to the result of the local elections shows that it’s not the Muslim Vote but the Muslim voice which irks.

Last month a presenter who was found to have shared racist content on a secret Telegram account according to the charity Hope Not Hate, broadcast the far-right conspiracy of Taqiyya, claiming Muslims were allowed to lie or manipulate the truth in order to get ahead. Fellow guests have claimed that Sharia law is in operation in large swathes of the UK – Islamic principles include not letting women work – and ‘how Islam supposedly teaches that non-Muslims are just to be conquered, destroyed they have to submit to Allah’.

Ofcom has regularly cited context as a factor in how it assesses complaints. The context here is that Muslims are being accused of disloyalty because they don’t particularly like a genocide being committed in Gaza and are using the ballot box to express that displeasure. But whilst it has come to dominate proceedings, Gaza is just the latest hot issue which has exercised a right wing who are in the midst of a forever culture war with Muslims the front and center target. That is the context which Ofcom so readily ignores.

Source: Byline Times