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Thursday 20 October 2016

Sun Child Refugee Claim BUSTED

[Update at end of post]

It’s clear that the Murdoch poodles at the Super Soaraway Currant Bun are not going to let such trivial things as facts get in the way of their continuing campaign of incitement against the unaccompanied children who have been allowed to leave the Calais refugee camp and join families already in the UK. Despite their having blatantly lied in this morning’s lead story, there they are again like a dog returning to its vomit.
Sun "research" fails again

The Home Office has said, in response to the Sun’steeth” claims, “dental checks to verify age of young refugees hoping to settle in UK would be ‘inaccurate and inappropriate’”. Moreover, as the Guardian has reported, “The official rejection of the demand from Conservative backbenchers was welcomed by the British Dental Association, which had earlier condemned the proposal as inappropriate and inaccurate”.

As to the photos showing some of the unaccompanied children, the Sun has been misleading its readers: “It has transpired that seven of the remaining children were younger and officials had asked photographers not to take pictures of them”. That’s as in younger than 16. So the only ones the paper’s readers see are 16 and 17. There have been several younger than that. The Sun doesn’t show them.

Worse, as the Guardian has also told, “George Gabriel of Citizens UK, which has been working in the Calais camp for more than a year on the transfer of child refugees to Britain under its Safe Passage programme, said that one of the photographs of ‘overage’ refugees that appeared on the front pages of British newspapers on Wednesday might in fact be a translator”. Did the Sun research this possibility? Did it heck.
That’s a pity, because the man on the front of yesterday’s Sun front page - and today’s Daily Star front page - is indeed an adult interpreter. THE SUN GOT IT WRONG. Very wrong. They lied to their millions of readers. And they aren’t sorry. Because the name of the game is not news reporting, but racist incitement. It’s like the past half-century of enlightenment on such issues never happened.

Instead, the paper has run yet another slice of incitement prominently featuring Tory bigot David T C Davies, who has now said “We must not be naive about this. It’s no good Lily Allen turning up with tears in her eyes and all the rest of it – we need to be quite hard-nosed here”. So it’s all right to be a raving bigot and use my taxes to fund it, then.

And it gets worse: Davies has also said “Someone who is willing to throw themselves on to an electrified rail line or jump into a moving lorry isn’t going to be terribly worried about having an X-ray”. Well of course - throwing yourself on to live conductor rail, that’s just trivial stuff, innit? Christ on a bike, this buffoon has literally no sense of self-awareness.
SPOT THE BRAINCELL

As for the Sun’s claim “AS THE third batch of so-called ‘child refugees’ arrive in Britain this morning it has been revealed more than two-thirds of them who had their ages assessed by the Home Office were found to actually be adults, official figures show”, that is the whole point. THE ONES WHO WERE FOUND TO BE ADULTS WEREN’T LET IN.

Meanwhile, those like Match Of The Day presenter Gary Lineker, who has been prepared to call out the racist bigotry, get a kicking on social media from the pond life. Makes you proud to be British, doesn’t it? Yeah, well, maybe it doesn’t. As you were, Sun hacks.

[UPDATE 21 October 0905 hours: the Home Office has stated that the person in the photo was not an interpreter.

But that does not mean he was one of the unaccompanied teenagers, either.

That has not stopped the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines and his rabble at the Guido Fawkes blog from all but making that claim (sorry Fawkes folks, but if you aren't going to link to this blog, I'm certainly not doing you the favour) and declaring that their bosses in the mainstream press are right.

That, O Great Guido, is the difference between this blog and yours: I say if there is doubt, while you just lie for the hell of it and hope no-one will notice]

16 comments:

Anonymous said...

Why is a charity dealing with asylum seekers decisions?
Surely that is a governmental agency position ?

Brad said...

He's not actually an interpreter apparently. Much as I would like you and Twitter to be right on this one, I think the Home Office have confirmed that this guy isn't a translator but is a person claiming to be a minor, here looking for asylum.

Hutcho said...

I'm not sure there's much evidence he's an interpreter, and indeed it seems that the Home Office are saying that he isn't an interpreter for them (they don't however, says he's one of the refugee children either)

Chris Satori said...

The Sun has always had a bit of a struggle telling the difference between minors and consenting adults.

mike said...

Just as you can step around vomit or dogcrap on a pavement, you can avoid the Sun and the Mail quite easily. But what on earth was the BBC doing leading on this bigot-bait non-story on its evening TV news yesterday? They should be making their own editorial judgement on what constitutes a genuine story, not following the tabloid rats into the sewer.

mm1145 said...

aprently gido say he is not an interprature

http://order-order.com/2016/10/20/no-man-yesterdays-sun-not-interpreter/

LiamKav said...

The person not being an interpreter doesn't mean that he's a child refugee. Which is what the Sun's original claim wasz despite having no evidence beyond "photographed near the scene" and "a bit brown".

Dave said...

It looks like they've had to take the original Tweet down, apparently due to harassment of the poor sod pictured. The organisation looks legit (there since 2007 at least), and if so are people with absolutely nothing to gain. The Sun have just made some vile claims and failed to back them up. Again.

Anonymous said...

Not an interpreter, home office has confirmed. Poor journalism doesn't cure poor journalism unfortunetly. How ironic.

Unknown said...

Please please tell me, why do people still buy and read such tabloids..

Unknown said...

Did the Home Office state that he wasn't an interpreter, or that he wasn't ONE OF THEIR interpreters?

TheOne said...

Talking of facts...it LOOKS as though the Home Office and TACT have issued apologies and confirmed he is NOT an interpreter. Maybe we could all do better by checking facts and not jumping to conclusions..pot,kettle....

Dave said...

Are they a migrant? Are they 40? Do you believe the home office? Where was the picture even taken? The Sun is a disgrace whichever way you look at it. If they are a migrant what have they seen and what are they running away from? The Sun is an absolute disgrace whichever way you look at it.

A.Robot (Mrs) said...

Who are 'we', Unknown at 9.24?
One of the 'we' involved just happens to be a millions-selling national 'newspaper' with some responsibility to exercise a little taste, judgement, restraint, maybe, given the not-too-discriminating nature of some of its readership. It also , as the tv news take-up of this 'story' reveals, has the ability, the power to define what is 'news', what is important and what, therefore, constitutes 'reality'. Who else in this little tale has that? You? Me? The refugees? Tim?

Anonymous said...

The tweet saying he was an interpreter has been deleted and TACT have put out a statement about it
https://www.tactcare.org.uk/news/2614-2/

TACT weren't sure he was an interpreter. The Guardian quote says he 'might be' an interpreter. Nobody seems to have any evidence that he was.

Anonymous said...

That's a lot of interpreter's they're shipping in where's the kids?