It’s fruitless to debate the culture-war confections of the rightwing press | Nesrine Malik

The newspapers promoting myths about Muslims and ‘snowflakes’ are making news, not reporting it

Earlier this month, MailOnline brought us another dispatch from the colonised towns of the UK. Muslims, we were told, had turned several towns into “no-go areas” for white people. Less than a month before, one of those particular areas – Didsbury, in Manchester – had been described by the very same newspaper website as a “posh and leafy suburb”, a popular “hotspot” for homebuyers. If you are wondering which story to believe, then perhaps I can help by telling you that the no-go areas story, long and detailed as it was, was not based on original reporting, but on a book by an ex-Islamist in which he makes several controversial claims that support his thesis of a divided Britain.

Some suggested that perhaps this laughable portrayal wouldn’t have slipped through if MailOnline had had greater geographical diversity among its reporters. Reporting from the ground is, of course, the only way to get at the truth. But where does reporting get you if the story you’re investigating is based on a preconceived view of the world?

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from The Guardian https://ift.tt/3cG0IP1

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