Hate for Hire – UK Journalists Legacy
Introduction
This extract from an article in the Independent published in November 2015, still applies today. Events since that article has provided more than enough evidence which clearly states there is a growing problem, relating to the various ways now that hate rhetoric is spread around the globe, and the targets of that rhetoric are suffering and some have lost their lives. It links to aspects of Human Rights Legislation, and the framework around the Human Rights Act, needs to reflect the modern developments in terms of how to recognise and deal with perpetrators.
The role of the media in the rise of hate crime in the UK is unequivocal. For too long now the right-wing tabloid press in the UK has vilified minorities and vulnerable groups. This vilification is by no means a new phenomenon and has long existed in British Media.
By
Sajda Mughal OBE
7/7 Survivor, Multi award winning community activist and counter extremism expert.
24/10/2017 12:29pm BST
Unrecognisable upsurge in open bigotry and subsequent hate crime in the UK evidencing a resurgence of racism on a scale many would not have viewed as possible in 2017. Reports of hate crime have gone up an unprecedented amount in aftermath of the Brexit vote and the recent spate of terrorist attacks in both London and Manchester. The attacks in Manchester and London saw a five fold increase in hate crime, these crimes had a specifically anti-Muslim rhetoric.
The role of the media in the rise of hate crime in the UK is unequivocal. For too long now the right-wing tabloid press in the UK has vilified minorities and vulnerable groups. This vilification is by no means a new phenomenon and has long existed in British Media. Experts have been warning for some time that antagonistic media coverage has been fuelling an increase in anti-Muslim and Islamophobic hate speech and crime.
In the past years, there have been several circumstances where the British media have subject groups and individuals through the ‘other’ to an unparalleled torrent of abuse. The recent and continuing refugee crisis, gave rise to an extreme rhetoric of hate. Evidence of this is best capsulated, in The Sun article, that compared African migrants to cockroaches, this article triggered a response from the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, made a powerful statement about the incitement of hatred in UK newspapers, calling out in particular the tabloids for their sustained attack on refugees and migrants. Al Hussein stated that “History has shown us time and again the dangers of demonizing foreigners and minorities, and it is extraordinary and deeply shameful to see these types of tactics being used in a variety of countries, simply because racism and xenophobia are so easy to arouse in order to win votes or sell newspapers.” This statement succinctly summarises the dangers and how truly detestable such behaviour is particularly give the motives.
Further, the repulsive anti-immigration rhetoric that formed parts of the Leave campaign and the successive Brexit vote, which was supported by the fore mentioned newspapers, that were complicit in the hate speech of the refugee crisis. A post-Brexit climate has created a society in which hate crime has become a regular reality for far too many.
How Hateful Rhetoric Can Connect to Real World Violence
Extract from one of the reference sources below:-
In January 6, 2021, President Trump gave an incendiary speech to supporters, lamenting election fraud, urging them to march on the Capitol where Congress was certifying the victory of President Biden, and telling them to “fight like hell.” Critics of the president, including his own acting Secretary of Defense Chris Miller, blamed the remarks for the Capitol riot. Congress would then go on to impeach Trump a second time for inciting the violence.
Part of the problem is that leaders’ remarks do not fade away after they are given. Incendiary rhetoric from political leaders against their political opponents, minority groups, and other targets is often quickly magnified. Leaders with large social media followings will see their remarks retweeted and otherwise shared with millions of followers. Leaders’ rhetoric then drives the coverage of more traditional news outlets, which broadcast it to their viewers and listeners. Rhetoric from national leaders also serves as a cue for local figures, particularly if the national leaders have loyal personal followings. The local leaders’ rhetoric in turn is amplified by social media and traditional outlets. Ordinary people play an important role too in spreading the message, sharing it with their own commentary with their friends and family.
Widely shared extreme rhetoric shifts the so-called “Overton Window,” signaling that an issue is now the subject of acceptable discourse when, in the past, discussing it might have been taboo. Prejudiced elite speech, one study found, is particularly powerful if other elites endorse it, emboldening audiences to declare their own prejudices and act on them accordingly.
So, what is the Overton Window?
The Overton Window is a model for understanding how ideas in society change over time and influence politics. The core concept is that politicians are limited in what policy ideas they can support — they generally only pursue policies that are widely accepted throughout society as legitimate policy options. These policies lie inside the Overton Window. Other policy ideas exist, but politicians risk losing popular support if they champion these ideas. These policies lie outside the Overton Window.
The Overton Window can both shift and expand, either increasing or shrinking the number of ideas politicians can support without unduly risking their electoral support.
https://youtu.be/FMUowaMP8Dc
The Overton Window doesn’t describe everything about how politics works, but it does describe one key thing: Politicians will not support whatever policy they choose whenever they choose; rather, they will only espouse policies that they believe do not hurt their electoral chances. And the range of policy options available to a politician are shaped by ideas, social movements and shared norms and values within society.
Meghan and Harry Netflix Documentary – Hit the Raw Nerve of Tabloid Prejudice
This next section is an article written by David Olusoga who took part in the Netflix documentary. The full article is in the reference sources listed at the end of this article.
As the couple carefully explained on camera, the telling of their own story in their own words is the purpose of the documentary. “Shouldn’t people hear our story?” asked Meghan in the first episode.
As I appear as one of its talking-head interviewees, I have found the past few days revelatory in a different way. Being caught in the series’ blowback is to be shown – in bleak and granular detail – how a six-year campaign of tabloid abuse has left huge numbers of otherwise reasonable people both obsessed with and contemptuous towards a young couple they have never met.
My Twitter feed is rarely pretty, but recent days have been particularly unappealing; a primordial soup of defensiveness, racism, misogyny, jingoism and whataboutery, garnished yesterday with an antisemitic conspiracy theory, as the documentary’s producer comes from a Jewish family.
Race was only ever one element in the dismal catalogue of mistreatment Meghan has been subjected to, and it is only one element of this series. But what is said by the couple about race and racism in Britain is new and revelatory, in part because black people and their families so rarely choose to speak publicly about their personal experiences of racism. This reticence stems from the knowledge that there is always a price to be paid for doing so. That price is currently being extracted from Meghan and Harry by the British tabloids.
Having recovered from their disappointment over the absence of headline-grabbing details, the papers launched their inevitable counterattack, one that even by their standards was extraordinary in its scale and fury. The Daily Mail carried more than 20 pages on the documentary. The vindictiveness of the tabloids was last week dialled up to new levels, not simply because attacks on Meghan sell papers but because the tabloids themselves have been called out by the Sussexes.
Having lost touch with irony decades ago, the tabloids sought to refute the criticisms levelled against them by engaging in exactly the behaviours of which they stand accused – shameless exaggeration, wilful misinterpretation, misattribution and at times inchoate fury, all the while maintaining their absolute refusal to even countenance the idea that race has any influence over their attitudes.
From the moment Prince Harry and Meghan Markle made their relationship known to the public in 2016, the message many Britons sent to her was clear:
You aren’t one of us, and you aren’t welcome.
Meghan, a biracial, divorced American actress, was far from what many envisioned as a fairy-tale match for a beloved member of the British royal family. While many in the UK welcomed her, the British tabloid media and a large swath of the Twitterverse were not kind.
The couple’s announcement that they’re distancing themselves from the royal family has been met with shock and anger by many in England and beyond.
Suddenly, the message for Meghan has changed from “Why are you here?” to “Where do you think you’re going?”
The same mixed signals applied to the attendance at the forthcoming Coronation, or as many of us regard it as the Con-A-Nation event. Months spent writing articles and tv media shows spending every single weekday discussing why Meghan was not welcome at the Coronation. Similar took place at the Queen’s funeral, and I know that I am not alone, that the treatment of Meghan throughout that whole event, was worse than disgraceful. It felt like those of us who supported her for supporting her husband, could not breath until we knew for certain that they had landed back in the USA. Even recently it was painful to read so called Royal supporters openly talking about how wonderful it was to see the anxiety in Meghan’s whole demeanor throughout the walkabout, and that it was wonderful to see the Duchess of Cambridge visibly step into Meghan space with the view to intimidate; the poster of those tweets thought it was hilarious and uplifting to see. It is clear that the UK enjoy telling Meghan that she is not welcome, and to constantly say how much they loved her on her wedding day, and how much the UK paid for this and that, and then they derive some type of sick pleasure to know that the treatment of her caused such obvious distress to both Harry and Meghan.
As for the Coronation, that has had tremendous difficulty in arousing much interest around the world or in the UK, still the gutter UK media were on daily doing polls, interviewing fellow right wingers about this and that, and a myriad of body language experts from some unknown entity who supposingly did their training, and the message was loud and clear, stating that Meghan was not welcome, and not to come. They took great delight in saying how much they did not want to see her there, and then when she turned down the invitation, they were mad as hell. Only British media could display such duality in terms of their output each day. The income generating hate rhetoric for months, went too far, and their money spinner that they all felt was a certainty suddenly evaporated away in seconds of its announcement. The complete and utter shock, that a confident female who knows her worth, for the 2nd time said No to the institution. The first time being when she walked away from abuse, and let it be known that she knows her worth, and she will respond to their nonsense. She is not so grateful to be part of that cartel and to give up her own agency. What so many people covet, regardless of how they may be treated, this fabulous strong lady said no thanks, you do you, and I will return to a better way of life and safety for my family, not to mention improvement in her mental health.
This 2nd refusal to be the sacrificial lamb at the event that was deliberately placed to happen on Harry and Meghan’s eldest child’s 4th birthday, assuming that despite all the don’t come we don’t want you rhetoric, they truly believed that Meghan would place them above her child. SMH. Meghan simply said No I will not be attending. The absolute shock. The King thought he was being smart by picking that date, but it is yet another example of a poor decision and complete lack of awareness
White Newsrooms
Direct quote from an article in CNN Business – link below
In a society in which millions of people come from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds, the British press remains stubbornly White.
A report by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism in 2016 found that just 6% of journalists across UK newsrooms don’t identify as White, compared with about 13% of the general population. The same study found that while Black Britons make up 3% of the population, they account for just 0.2% of journalists.
According to a report last July from the Reuters Institute, none of Britain’s top 10 print, digital or broadcast outlets have a Black editor in chief. And a study by Women in Journalism, a campaigning organization, found that during one week in July not a single story by a Black reporter appeared on the front pages of the 11 most widely read UK newspapers.
UK tabloids have faced repeated allegations from media commentators, their own readers and Harry that their negative coverage of Meghan has racist undertones.
But there is a refusal among the press to see this coverage as “racist bullying,” said Duffy.
“Racism is denied in general,” she told CNN Business. There is a tendency to deny it because Meghan is “rich and married into the royal family,” she added. “Racism happens no matter your age, class, money, status, job. It still affects you.”
“CNN Business reached out to the leading UK tabloids for this article including the Daily Mail, Reach Plc, which publishes the Mirror and the Express, and The Sun’s publisher News UK.
They did not provide comment on their coverage of Meghan and failed to answer questions about the racial makeup of their newsrooms, but pointed to various initiatives aimed at promoting the diversity of editorial staff, including training programs for journalists who do not identify as White.”
Royal Reporters Totally Unnecessary
The treatment of Harry and Meghan is exactly the same game being played by the same tabloids inciting their readership to stop the infiltration (as they see it) of the wrong shade of person entering the figurehead white supremacist UK Royal family. High societal groups are held in esteem by those feel some sense of stability and pride to have the figurehead family at the helm. It is all about optics not real outcomes proven by factual information. The tabloids could care less about the finer points, it encourages and then incites the rage and then writes fantasy tales every day, which read by the masses of their readership, increases sales of their rags and more money is made. The tabloid owners lose no sleep over any casualties among their chosen targets for ie, or the abusers out there prepared to fall on their sword to keep Britain British, as long as they can still travel everywhere with ease, and be treated like special people. More and more they are realising that they are not considered special outside of the UK, and they seem most put out. What they fail to recognise, or if they are aware but choose to ignore the realities of the facts, is all the newspaper owners live outside of the UK, so all the chaos that they create to make money, does not impact them in any negative way, because they choose not reside or pay taxes to the UK, and all the extra money being made enables them to be able to opt out of being part of the Lord of the Flies environment they helped to create.
Targets and the worker bees that the tabloids and the establishment create from their rhetoric are collateral damage if anything occurs to any of them. They have dehumanised them from the start. When the day comes that the middle and working classes are not dehumanised by the people at the top of society ho they believe care about them, will learn the hard way, and likewise all the Rotyal Reporters who truly believe that the BRF is their friend, and that they are valuable to the BRF and vice versa, will also learn that painful lesson, that they are just worker bees to the hierarchy, and lose not a moment of sleep when any of you are made redundant, and that day is coming.
Zero justification for all of you to write about the same topics and people, using the same clearly agreed buzz words and phrases, in order to destroy the reputation of someone, or to break their spirit, or in the extreme, stop their heart from beating. When the same two people that you write multiple articles a day about, do not even live in the UK and they have stepped back from Royal duties, you have zero reason to write about them. Your salary is based on writing about the The Royal Family. The clue is in the name “Royal Reporter”. If any are needed one person could do it, with an Artificial Intelligence software package to do the searches for information. The rest of the RRs are surplus to requirements already, and that penny will drop too one day to both newspaper Barons and the RRs themselves.
How you can get up each morning and write the things that you do, knowing the damage you are trying to create is shameful. The repeat of this behaviour and relentless pursuit of your target, is illegal and one day that is another penny that will drop, and you will all realise that you are collateral damage to the newspaper industry. Good Luck with that, because I for one, will lose no sleep over that legal action when it comes. The comedy Press badge that you all wear, is a meaningless item, and is no shield against what will one day come your way – to most of you
Hate Models
I referred to the following two models in Episode 20 of the podcast, back in October 2021. Here is an extract from a Blog I used at the time, and listed in the reference sources.
Allport’s Scale of Prejudice and Discrimination.
The scale outlines the process of how bias and prejudice evolve into discrimination and further into acts of violence. This process occurs when the behaviour at the lower levels are left unchecked and become social norms. Stereotypes fall directly in line with disparaging terms. Even when the stereotype is positive, it often results in a negative outcome for those being stereotyped. An example of this can be seen by school teachers who believe the stereotype about all Asians being good at math. The teacher buys into this stereotype, so less tutoring is offered to Asian students.
The point is that by perpetuating stereotypes, we help to foster an environment in which it is easier to discriminate against one another. Once members of a group overcome any objections, be they personal or social, to discriminating against another group, it becomes easier for members of that group to graduate into the next higher level.
If one still has reservations about this line of reasoning, perhaps it would be of benefit to compare Allport’s scale to the one used by the Federal Bureau of Investigation to describe the progression of hate crimes.
The progression is titled the Seven Stage Hate Model and describes how hate groups form, progress into prejudicial behaviour before entering into violence. The similarity between this model and Allport’s scale is evident.
Edwin Hayward – An Absolute Legend. Credit Edward for his continuous work on Twitter, relating to calling people/organisations to account. This is part of a much wider piece of analysis carried out by Edwin, on the volume of articles written about the Duchess of Sussex in a 24 hour timescale, by one tabloid. There are examples of similar outputs in the same time 24 hours by the other UK tabloids. All of them negative. More than proves the points above. (As an aside I did a similar exercise in 2018, and the figures were very similar. I published them in 2019 as part of a piece of work I was doing at the time). I stand by the Title of this podcast and article. Royal Reporters earn more because of the level of engagement when they write negative articles about the most searched for person on the planet. They have zero interest in writing about the actual Royal Family that they are paid to write about. It seems that the BRF only receives positive articles every few days, in return for information on the couple that the BRF and its media chased out of the UK. The BRF have never had 25 articles written about them in a 24 hour period by all the tabloids combined, never mind just one.
(I would like to take the opportunity here to apologise to Edwin, who i referred to as Edward in the podcast. Sincere apologies I came back to check this article and I referred to you in one line incorrectly too. I have amended and it all should be correct now.) Highly recommend you follow Edwin on Twitter. Research detail like no other. Legend. Thank you for allowing me to quote an extract from your work. I recommend you all look at the data relating to articles written about the Sussexes on just one day, from each tabloid. It is frightening – not least because they were all hateful and the rhetoric should never have been allowed to stand in my opinion. I do feel the tide is changing, and much of what is written and said by this group of publications will be challenged.
“This is what industrial-scale hatemongering looks like. All the stories below attacking Meghan (mainly) and Harry (quite a bit) appeared on the Express website within the last 24H. 44 bile-filled rants in just one day. That’s a pace of 16,000 attacks a year.”
The danger to life and damage to mental health is beyond words in its seriousness and depravity for any institution or group to set out to destroy another person or people for income. There is a special place in hell or its equivalent on any planet for all those involved in this industry, and includes the social media platforms which earn 60% of the income earned by the account holders, and more than anything, the people (powerful people) who fund the hire of resources from various Bot farms around the globe, to continue with the multiple numbers of posts each day, full of hate rhetoric with no regard to the potential outcome. Royal Reporters of tabloid newspapers, together with Royal Reporters from once respected serious newspapers, who now are also part of the hate for hire, and more to the point, are known as being such people world wide. All Royal Reporters think that they are characters in a play or something similar, because their names are known in the celebrity circuit. We the public should not know the names of the people behind the articles. The articles and its content should take centre stage. UK Royal Reporters do not write and inform anyone about news, they create fake news and use propaganda techniques to get people on board with their negative content, and hate filled rhetoric with the high risk of harm on a wide scale. People have died as a result of interaction with UK Royal Reporters, and many more suffering immense mental health ongoing issues as a direct result of the RRs chasing the coins. It is something that is a crucial element of the SGUK Coercive Control campaign, and it is a case study for the global victims of similar cruelty and control activities and their advocates to include in their experiences in their country. The research centres that we have included in our campaign, together with specialist consultants and international legal advocates this is worthy of your time to look into in far more detail.
All the USA Elected officials that I have contacted many times, and I know many others around the world have or will be contacting you all soon, together with elected officials from their own countries with a view to you all protecting the people who voted for you in the first place. Lives are being lost of damaged by the acts of power organisations and their partnerships with those who act as the frontline of attack, hiding behind press badges and words on their litter tray liners that pass as news publications.
All of the high profile individuals we hope will spread this information far and wide, and get the conversations going with the organisations we listed as a starting point around the globe. This incitement of hate and putting lives at risk for dollars or pounds, needs to be called what it is. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex represent all those who cannot afford the resources to fight their respective abusive actions from powerful people around the globe. All of them, whether they are affluent or not, deserve protection under the law.
Hate incitement is dangerous and cruel, and is a crime. About time those responsible for the international Human Rights legislation and its enforcement, need to do something, or step aside and let new people in who will do something. In the case of Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, her Human Rights were violated for 3 years on UK soil, and is now into 3 years and counting now that she is back on her home country and state of USA, California. Abuse continues via online methods in a variety of ways. The delivery of abuse no longer requires the abuser to be in the same country. Enough is enough. No more lives to be lost and action needs to be taken and people held to account for their dangerous and cruel activities. A press badge is not a shield. Owners of the said publications need to be held accountable too, but no tabloid journalist who has been involved in this illegal activity should be spared and allowed the excuse that they were doing their job. Supporters of the Sussexes have a Rogues Gallery of the vast number of people employed in the UK media industry (written and televised) who only speak about the Sussexes every single day. All hate filled, and with a voracious appetite to seek and destroy and then find another victim when the current one stops breathing or stops earning them money. Yes, it is Hate for Hire and will forever be the legacy of the UK Royal Reporters for at least the last 30 years. Shameful.
Extract from CNN Entertainment
The reaction to Meghan trying to carve out a new life with her husband “reinforces the stereotype of black women being destructive, divisive and unsatisfied,” says Nsenga Burton, a professor at Emory University in Atlanta who specializes in the intersection of race, class, gender and the media.
Burton told CNN it’s easy to see why black women have rallied around Meghan, because they see themselves in how she’s being treated.
“People are cool with black women as long as we go along to get along,” she said. “As soon as we start standing up for ourselves and saying, ‘This is not working for me,’ we become the problem.”
“Having the audacity – because that’s what it is – to exhibit self-sovereignty has always been a privilege reserved for men, especially white men,” she told CNN. “Yet here is Meghan exhibiting this ‘audacity’ and it’s being … pushed forward by a white man who happens to be her husband.”
Eubanks argues that Prince Harry presenting a united front with his spouse “triggers people” because it places “a white Prince of royal blood and a black American woman commoner” on equal footing.
“That sight doesn’t sit well with everyone due to how they’ve been conditioned to view women and people of color, whether they realize it or not.”
Hate for Hire is dangerous. When an Employers payment model requires employees to earn money by only operating in this way, then it puts each person against the rest of their colleagues. The very essence of that working environment then becomes such that the Overton Model plays out in the workplace too, not just in society outside of it.
Ivy
30th April 2023
Reference Sources
https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/sajda-mughal-obe/the-role-of-the-media_b_18358822.html
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/aug/01/media-framed-migrant-crisis-disaster-reporting
https://thebenote.substack.com/p/removing-black-children-from-racist
http://sowhatihearyousaying.blogspot.com/2011/09/stereotypes-are-devil.html
https://www.mackinac.org/OvertonWindow
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/01/10/entertainment/meghan-markle-blame-all-sides-race-trnd/index.html