Nick Lowles says:
I woke up this morning to find that just over 3,600 people have so far co-signed our open letter to the editor of the Daily Star calling for more responsible reporting. That is a really fantastic start to the day.
But my day can get better. I’m hoping to have 5,000 names by the end of the day. For the Daily Star to take us seriously we need to show the strength of feeling out there so if you’ve not signed up then please do, if you have then please send an email/facebook message to all your friends urging them to do likewise.
You can sign up here
http://action.hopenothate.org.uk/page/s/responsible-reporting
This is why:
The need for our campaign was highlighted only this morning when BNP leader Nick Griffin announced on Twitter: “the relentless media critique of Islam is creating fertile ground for BNP future”.
If that doesn’t shake some newspaper editors up then I don’t know what will.
We face two, linked problems:
– An absence of good reporting – until recently – on the activities of certain specific, named, Islamist political parties. Jamaat-e-Islami. The Muslim Brotherhood. Hizb ut Tahrir, and the loose Salafi Jihadi network with its attendant hate preachers.
– A relentless drip, drip, drip of demoralising, and often fantastical, misreporting of issues involving Muslims: from the made-up plot to kill Lord Sugar, to the seasonal “Muslims Cancel Our Christmas” stories.
The Daily Star is a particularly bad offender. I don’t believe they’ve ever broken a single story of value. Yet this is their present fare. Look! It just can’t go on.
We can’t beat the BNP or the EDL, and we can’t beat Jamaat-e-Islami or Hizb ut Tahrir, unless we win this fight. The careless, callous vilification of Muslims fuels all four groups. It also makes it much, much harder to make the case against the Islamist parties, by allowing them falsely to portray their critics as anti Muslim bigots and Islamophobes.
So sign the letter.
