Social media isn’t solely to blame for the shameful riots
Opinion
Social platforms have clearly played a huge role, but many newspapers should take some responsibility for creating the attitudes that have culminated in this violence.
There is a clear hierarchy of blame over which sections of the media bear the greatest responsibility for the shameful rioting and looting that has brought disgrace on cities across England and Northern Ireland.
There is no question whatsoever that social media bears the greatest share of the blame by first spreading false information, fanned by right-wing extremists and almost certainly with the help of Russian bots, that the three girls in Southport were murdered by an asylum seeker who had arrived on a small boat.
If there was any remaining doubt, it was removed earlier this week by the inflammatory tweets from X owner Elon Musk, when he argued with ludicrous hyperbole that the UK was facing inevitable “civil war” as a result of its immigration policies.
Musk, a financial backer and apologist for Donald Trump, highlighted a totally inaccurate tweet from Tommy Robinson claiming: “Muslims ran through the streets unchallenged by police attacking any non-Muslim.” The Times reported in its splash on Tuesday that Musk gave an exclamation mark to another post that the government was “prioritising mosques over British girls in their dance classes”.
Robinson, pictured by the Daily Mail on the run and sunning himself in a five-star resort in Cyprus, clearly played a major role via social media in stirring up his thuggish supporters.
The police may well be interested in one of his tweets, which inadvertently revealed that the lawyer representing him had resigned and the reason he did. “I am just letting you know with your instigation of riots in the UK causing lots of people to suffer, I cannot represent you any more,” the lawyer wrote.
Shifting the blame
A number of media types have hardly covered themselves in glory over the riots, including former Sun editor Kelvin MacKenzie — forever stained by his paper’s coverage of the Hillsborough football disaster — and Mail on Sunday columnist Sarah Vine.
MacKenzie, at his most slippery, tried to blame prime minister Sir Keir Starmer for the fact that “ordinary people” associated the Southport murders with illegal immigration.
“Starmer and his bunch of Islington lawyers just don’t get it. His very political speech, surrounded by Union flags, deliberately misses the point. He doesn’t understand that ordinary people associate the murder of innocent children with the arrival of illegal immigrants,” MacKenzie tried to argue, while tacitly admitting that their beliefs were untrue.
The former editor of The Guardian, Alan Rusbridger, delivered a tart rebuke to MacKenzie. “Once upon a time, experienced journalists saw it as their job to put people straight” when they got the wrong end of the stick, he noted.
Views from the right-wing press
Vine’s approach was much more bizarre. In a front page “comment”, Vine summons up James Callaghan’s totally unrelated Winter of Discontent and smears Starmer with it by creating a Summer of Discontent. She then stirs in Huw Edwards “plunging the BBC into yet another existential crisis” before going on to accuse Labour of being more interested in playing politics than taking on the responsibilities of power.
And it’s not just the BBC in an existential crisis — so is the UK as a whole and “many people are deeply worried about the deteriorating state of our nation”. Vine concludes that, far from uniting a divided nation, Starmer and his team have been a bitter disappointment and first-time Labour voters in “blue wall” seats must be feeling a twinge of buyer’s regret.
What, after four weeks? As opposed to 14 years?
Even The Times falls for the four weeks vs 14 years fallacy by condemning, under the headline “Policy vacuum”, the fact that Starmer’s government “is yet to settle on a workable plan” for immigration. The paper sees “a discouraging sign” in the pausing of plans to increase the salary threshold at which spouses of legal migrants can settle in Britain.
Meanwhile, the main Daily Telegraph take on the riots, after condemnation of the violence, is a worry that the Labour government might broaden the laws against Islamophobia, thereby threatening freedom of expression.
Curate’s egg
The BBC’s coverage has been the perfect example of a curate’s egg.
While the knowledge and wisdom of social affairs editor Mark Easton has been effectively deployed, far too often the riots, violence and looting have been described as “protests”, as if such behaviour passed as normal. One hapless reporter was even heard bumbling about pro-British protests.
Rather belatedly, the BBC has now started to call it like it should be and described rioting and looting that is merging into terrorism.
Far from guiltless
Another Mail columnist, Andrew Pierce, clashed online with another former Sun editor David Yelland with an interesting outcome.
Challenged on air about the Daily Mail’s anti-immigrant coverage, Pierce asked for evidence and Yelland produced a montage of Daily Mail front pages over the years that were negative about immigrants and helped to create an undercurrent of anti-immigrant attitudes in some sections of society.
Such attitudes, accelerated by Brexit, have culminated this week in Filipino nurses having stones thrown at them on their way to work in the NHS and attempts to set fire to a residence for asylum seekers.
The right-wing press is far from guiltless and should have a care for what they have helped to create.
Meanwhile, as more and more rioters and looters head for prison, the government has to crack down on the social media groups that have encouraged and enabled such violence.
Fines as high as 10% of annual turnover would get the attention of even Musk and others responsible.
Raymond Snoddy is a media consultant, national newspaper columnist and former presenter of NewsWatch on BBC News. He writes for The Media Leader on Wednesdays — read his column here.