Livingstone sees "Islamophobia"

Just the other day I commented that what some commentators perceive as political bias within the communications media is more often mere helplessness. But it does matter. At a minimum it infantilises policy debate. Here's a nice example from the BBC:

Muslims are being "demonised" by the British media, with 91% of reports being negative, research commissioned by London's mayor has found.

Ken Livingstone said the survey, by consultancy firm Insted, studied a week's news reports and found Islam was portrayed as a "threat to the West".... Mr Livingstone said the research by Insted - a consultancy firm which deals with issues of diversity and equality - found the national media had a "hostile and scaremongering attitude" towards the community.

Mr Livingstone said: "The overall picture presented by the media is that Islam is profoundly different from and a threat to the West.

"I think there is a demonisation of Islam going on which damages community relations and creates alarm among Muslims," he said.

Mr Livingstone urged editors to be balanced in their coverage saying out of 352 articles studied by researchers last year just 4% were positive.

The word that ought properly to conclude the first sentence is of course not "found" but "opined". The report was announced at the Mayor's press conference yesterday, and may be downloaded here. Livingstone writes in his foreword:

One of the most startling findings of this report is that in one typical week in 2006, over 90 per cent of the media articles that referred to Islam and Muslims were negative. The overall picture presented by the media was that Islam is profoundly different from and a threat to the west.

The reasoning is elusive and the document is material of a type whose conclusions might have been - and I believe were - prefabricated by its authors. These include Inayat Bunglawala of the Muslim Council of Britain, with whom I have debated before, and a Professor of Film and Television at Brunel who is chairman of the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom. The Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom is one of that select class of institution - like, say, Truth in Science, which calls for “critical examination of Darwinism in schools” - whose identity and purpose are exactly opposite to what is stated in the name. The only part of the report that's worth waiting for is the suppressed indignation satisfyingly implict in a remark on page 74: "The MCB [Muslim Council of Britain] seeks to engage with all mainstream political parties and until recently has enjoyed a close association with the current Government."

The conference webcast may be viewed here; it is a painful experience. The first five or six minutes are taken up with the Mayor's comments on hydrogen buses. He then hands over to a hapless fellow called Robin Richardson to introduce the report. Richardson hasn't got the report and appears to be flummoxed that Comrades Bright and Cohen, along with John Ware of the BBC, wish to ask him questions about it.

This farcical episode was brought to you at London council taxpayers' expense.

UPDATE: Nick, in The Standard, recounts his experience of that bizarre press conference:

Although Livingstone had sat on the report for weeks no copies were available to study before the conference – “problems with couriers,” apparently. It arrived while Livingstone was speaking and as we skim read we learned that it was giving Islam “negative associations” to report that the Iranian regime was holding a conference of Holocaust deniers. Muslim democrats in Iran opposed it. Livingstone and his “leading academics” could not. Meanwhile, journalists – including me – conveyed “negative associations” when we wrote that Jack Straw was standing up for the rights of women when he criticised the full veil. Muslim feminists oppose the veil. Mr Livingstone and his “leading academics and experts” cannot.

The worst of it was that a large chunk of the report was a devious attack on a Panorama expose of the Muslim Council of Britain by John Ware of the BBC. As luck would have it, Ware was at the press conference and able to point out that all the criticisms of the MCB he broadcast came from liberal-minded British Muslims. Were they like Iranian democrats and Arab feminists Islamophobes as well?

Then Ware looked at the press release and noticed that one of Livingstone’s nine “leading academics and experts” wasn’t an academic or expert at all but Inayat Bungawala of the MCB. Later I found out that the two other Muslims on the panel were from the MCB as well. At a cost of £30,000 to the taxpayer, Livingstone was allowing the MCB and its friends to rubbish a well-sourced and balanced documentary and dressing up the results as an impartial study.