Whether it’s EU migrants or Black Lives Matter campaigners, enemies are singled out to keep Britain’s hierarchies intact
There is a myth that many in the press in Britain cling on to for dear life: they are members of a crusading profession which, in the mould of Woodward and Bernstein, unfailingly holds the powerful to account. If there are any isolated examples of journalism that afflicts the powerless by indulging in racism or encouraging prejudice, they are outweighed by all the good work of those crusaders. The myth remains impervious to all the evidence that continues to mount, but every once in a while the sheer weight of reality comes through.
This month, for example, the Society of Editors issued a laughable statement not just denying the allegations that Meghan had received racist media coverage, but denying that there was even a section of the British press that was bigoted. It has yet to retract the claim although, following some factually grounded criticism and the resignation of its executive director, Ian Murray, it is reportedly working on a follow-up statement. In another incident last week, the political commentator Ash Sarkar received an apology and damages from the Sunday Telegraph columnist Julie Burchill, who had called Sarkar a paedophile-worshipping Islamist on social media. “Those at the top of our industry,” Sarkar wrote, “have persistently drawn a veil of silence around the bullying tactics that drum black and brown women out of public life.”
