How should the media respond to the BNP? Since Nick Griffin’s appearance on Question Time last October the question is at last being debated.
Some insist that if we ignore them they’ll just go away. Andrew Gilligan put this case in the Telegraph last month: “The BNP is not a serious party. The main danger is that its opponents and the media talk it up into one.”
Sunny Hundal writes on Comment is Free:
There was a brilliant column by Johann Hari a few years ago about his experience of appearing on a Sky News programme hosted by newspaper columnist Richard Littlejohn. Having admitted he didn’t know how much an asylum seeker got in benefits, Littlejohn screeched at Hari: “It’s people like you who help the BNP!”
James Macintyre writes at his News Statesman blog:
Last night, a lively rally took place at the Amnesty International headquarters in east London to launch a pressure group called Expose, aimed at sharpening media scrutiny of the British National Party.
The organisation, whose work-in-progress website is here, and of which I am a founding member, owes its inception to the hard work of a number of NUJ representatives, especially David Crouch of the Financial Times. The idea for it emerged after the BNP gained two seats in the European elections last year, and after its leader’s subsequent appearance on BBC1’s Question Time.
EXPOSE on Twitter