Damn gutter press again...

Porcelain pigs question etc. Keep cropping up. Lets use that as an example. Look at Birmingham City Councils own update on the situation.

"Q-News (01.06.98) reports that the Sun, the main national newspaper reporting on the case of the woman in Leicester whose pig ornaments were confiscated by police as being evidence of a possible breach of public order (see BMMS for May 1998), omitted to mention certain salient details. These were that there had been a history of feuding between Ms Bennett, the owner of the china ornaments, and local Muslims; that the display in the window was calculated to give offence and did not consist merely of the ornaments; and that the dispute between neighbours stemmed from Ms Bennett's hostility to the patrols of vigilantes who were attempting to keep street-walking prostitutes out of the area. Manzoor Moghul of the Federation of Muslim Organisations, speaking about the way in which the Sun handled the issue, said: "These people are mischief makers, out and out racists. What they've done is picked up a story from somebody and taken bits of it to say that an innocent woman is being persecuted by militant Muslims. It is terrible the way they've done it. If there was no case the police wouldn't have taken the action that they have". A letter in the Walsall Express & Star (23.06.98), from a respondent who, from his name appears not to be Muslim, points out that: "The reason the Leicester police acted was that the lady had placed one of her pigs prominently on a verse (in Arabic) of the Koran and placed a paper topi on a cut out of a pig's head in her window. Most people would see this as deliberately provocative. Should we perhaps enquire more fully before criticising the Muslim community…"

Maybe some things should be banned. Gutter journalism for instance?

Cheers

Dave