It was only last Thursday that Zelo Street caught the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines and his rabble at the Guido Fawkes blog overreaching themselves: after trying a nudge-and-wink smear against Owen Jones, they came badly unstuck when their suggestion that all was not above board with one of Jones’ recent crowdfunding efforts was shown to have missed the most basic of research. There was nothing untoward. They caved.
Behold the occupant of the moral high ground
But those who thought The Great Guido might think twice before opening mouth and inserting boot thought wrong: yesterday they were at it again, telling readers “Channel 4’s Assed Baig Out After Promoting Terror-Supporting Islamist”. The broadcaster had received a complaint about an item whose participants included one Nadia Chan, and so had removed the online video pending investigation.
Assed Baig
This is standard procedure for Channel 4: the same happened to an item about the Libyan community in Manchester recorded in the wake of the Arena bombing, the latter catching pro-am motormouth Katie Hopkins unaware (not, admittedly, a challenging proposition). But then the Fawkes massive heard that Baig had left Channel 4: they immediately added 2 and 2, but as so often, came up with a number greater than 4.
Sadly for The Great Guido, Baig had not been ousted from Channel 4 because of the item featuring Nadia Chan. He duly put them straight: “I left @Channel4News on August 9, before the piece on Muslim women went out. A decision that I had informed them of at least a month before … My decision to leave has got nothing to do with that piece, nor was I forced out anyway. Anything stating otherwise is inaccurate”.
The Fawkes rabble had been caught with trousers well alight once more. Would they carry on and hope no-one noticed? Perhaps they would just tell Baig to sue them if he thought he was hard enough. Sadly for The Great Guido, he was reduced to a mealy-mouthed climbdown, which was quietly slipped out in the hope that no-one would notice. But the post had already been screen shotted - and there was another dead giveaway.
Before ...
The headline was bodged to read “Channel 4‘s Assed Baig Out Amid Promoting Terror-Supporting Islamist”. The first line of the post was also amended to use “amid” instead of “after” - it now reads “A senior reporter has left Channel 4 News amid presenting a package last week promoting a racist Islamist who supported ramming attacks”. Yes, the blog run by someone who once proposed joining forces with the BNP calling “racist”.
... and after ...
But the dead giveaway is that the URL still reads “http://ift.tt/2vsldLvafter-promoting-terror-supporting-islamist“. And then the Fawkes rabble ends the post with “The spokesman also confirmed that Baig left Channel 4 News before the piece went to air”. In other words, it was screamingly obvious that his departure was not as a result of the report being broadcast.
... which means this
The Great Guido is starting to make a habit of this crap-research-followed-by-abject-climbdown business. Another fine mess.
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