Sunday, May 16, 2004

Liberal Self-Censorship - is the tide on the turn ?

I reported a while back on the case of Mohammed Dica - a Somali asylum seeker convicted of deliberately infecting his lovers with HIV (he's since appealed), and how every UK news source described his asylum status save for two - the Guardian and BBC.

In the similar case of Feston Konzani things seem to be changing somewhat. The Guardian, Telegraph, Independent, Mirror, Scotsman, Sun, Ananova, Scotland on Sunday and Tyne Tees TV all describe Konzani as an asylum seeker.

So do five out of the ten BBC stories. It must be difficult - to reconcile the BBCs ancient mission to report news and its more modern mission to produce the perfectly tolerant society, even at the price of - shall we say suppressio veri ? Five out of ten ain't bad - someone at the BBC is showing positively Solomonic news judgement.


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