Tell the whole truth
Sep 16th, 2009 by handolio
I’m not sure if this post heralds a return to regular Hackbashing, but today I find my enthusiasm fanned by some happy changes at work, and my rage stoked by some fucking awful journalism from the Mirror.
First, take a look at this story from the paper. What a bastard, eh? Buggering off back to Pakistan rather than facing charges.
But wait, there was something about the same case on BBC News, now I think about it, and it mentioned something about the UK Border Agency. And this BBC story, from Friday, explained more of the background.
So, looking again at the Mirror story:
1) Raza may well be guilty, but he didn’t “flee” to Pakistan – he was granted leave to go there under bail.
2) It’s disingenuous in the extreme to simply say that he was “given a £516 return ticket by police”, when he had first spent £800 on two rejected visa applications. The payment was only arranged after the judge in the trial summonsed the UK Borders Agency to ask why it had prevented Raza attending trial, and had subsequently ordered it to secure his attendance in court.
I suppose my question is whether the author shat this one onto the paper’s website while no-one was looking, or whether somebody else got the chance to edit it first – and if so why it wasn’t corrected and hasn’t been now?
Or should I take a wild guess?
