The Daily and Sunday Mirror used to be a pretty reasonable newspapers. Granted, they have a heavy Labour bias and once employed Piers Morgan as editor, but to give it credit, it was the paper that was one of the first to publish a story on the Cambodian killing fields of Pol Pot and it has over the decades employed some dedicated and diligent journalists. Its pages have been graced by the work of a vast array of talent, some of it high profile like John Pilger and Keith Waterhouse and by some great reporters who were more low key, like the ‘journalist’s journalist’, George Glenton.
The Mirror stable of titles once produced some great journalism and great newspapers, not anymore. This week marks the point when the Mirror has shown that it is not prepared to put effort into a huge story, that of the ongoing scandal of Islamic Rape Gangs, but will put effort into a grubby exposè of an even grubbier Tory MP, Brooks Newmark, who merely appears to have flashed his tackle on social media.
Investigative journalism is an expensive business. The story may start with just a whiff of information that needs to be checked out, and following up the various leads can take thousands of hours of journalistic time. All this effort for a story that may have to be spiked at the last minute because of legal problems or because the journalist cannot find the verifying evidence that will allow them to publish. However, when a big investigation story breaks, it can have repercussions that can burnish a paper’s reputation and that of its journalists.
With this in mind, why did Mirror newspapers choose to put all their investigative journalistic efforts into the worthless journalistic bauble that is the revelation that an MP has allegedly flashed pictures of his private parts on social media? They could have been putting their reporters onto the Rotherham story months or even years ago, or examined Northumbria Police’s belated response to Islamic Rape Gangs, Operation Sanctuary. That they have not put the same effort into exposing the Islamic Rape Gangs as they have for a ‘flashing’ Tory, is evidence that they have put party before journalistic truth.
The Mirror has either been very much behind the curve on the stories of Child Sexual Exploitation by gangs of Muslims, or it is going relatively easy on the story because too many of these Islamic Rape Gangs are afflicting Labour party run areas. They even managed to run, in 2013, a story about these rape gangs without mentioning that ‘Asians’ (for that read Muslims), were suspected of being involved in many of these cases. Looking at the evidence, and looking at the Mirror titles long history of backing Labour, even when Labour was quite rightly, unelectable, gives the strong suspicion that the newspapers have taken the view, my ‘party right or wrong’.
The Times newspaper has, to a large extent, supported the work of Andrew Norfolk, the journalist who has, within the confines of a politically correct publishing environment, made great strides in publicising the problems of Islamic Rape Gangs, and for that he and they must be commended. The contrast with the treatment of this ongoing rape scandal by the Mirror titles, which proudly proclaim themselves to be on the side of the British family, is not just stark, but a damning indictment on the ethics and morals of Mirror newspapers. By its choice of journalistic priorities some will say that the Mirror has crossed the line from being merely partisan, to being an outright propaganda sheet.
