LBC presenter Nick Ferrari, an appallingly immodest man with much to be modest about, is not backward in coming forwards to tell anyone who will listen that he is a Proper Journalist, a man of the highest professional principle, and not at all like these ghastly New Media outlets which he dislikes with a passion. Especially those on the left.
Gammon in the morning
So it was that when The Great Man found himself on the same BBC Question Time panel as the Canary’s editor in chief Kerry-Anne Mendoza, he regarded it as the gravest possible insult, telling Ms Mendoza, in a newsroom diversity discussion, “It would be an unpalatable fact for you that the reality is that the people who were involved in the brutal racist killing of Stephen Lawrence would not be behind bars without the power of the Daily Mail, and that’s a fact, and the editor took a great risk and could have gone to jail”. Ri-i-i-ight.
Kerry-Anne Mendoza
Last year, in an article titled “‘MURDERERS’ - of myths, Macpherson, and the Daily Mail”, Brian Cathcart concluded “while the paper’s actions involved editorial brilliance and probably had positive consequences, its principal claims are at best exaggerated and at worst unsupported by evidence”. Also, Paul Dacre was never in danger of being jailed.
Ferrari’s Question Time rant then continued “Never has the mainstream media been more important, because while I respect what people like that are doing [gestures dismissively at Ms Mendoza], and it’s great, and it gets kids involved … don’t forget, when you go to these sorts of utterings, which many times are like the mad ramblings of the man on the top deck of the bus, speaking into his hand, they have no journalistic backup whatsoever”.
There was more. “That is why we need to keep journalists, like the people who work on this show, on Question Time, who work on my radio show on LBC, because when you hear it from us, it will be true [my emphasis], or to the best of our endeavours it will be true, not just made up because …” By this time, many in the audience were booing him.
They might start up the booing once more when they see just how faithful Nick Ferrari is to his commitment that “when you hear it from us, it will be true … to the best of our endeavours”. And we now have an excellent example of just how true those endeavours can be, after The Great Man’s Sunday Express column from October 28th.
“Javid dares tell us truth about abuse, says NICK FERRARI” screams the headline, with a diatribe on so-called “grooming gangs” telling “Study horrific abuse stories in places such as Rotherham, Rochdale, Oxford, Bristol and Telford. It seems everyone from the police to the NHS to social services is frightened of standing up” and then claiming “One study says 84 per cent of those convicted for child grooming since 2005 are Asian”.
Two things here. One, the claim is for “grooming gang offences”, not “child grooming”. And two, this is the Quilliam “research” which has recently been shown to be, at best, seriously suspect, and at worst, not worth the paper on which it has been published.
After a complaint from Miqdaad Versi of the Muslim Council of Britain, the Express conceded the first point. They are yet to move on the second. But from Nick Ferrari, there has been nothing. So when he says “when you hear it from us, it will be true … to the best of our abilities”, he’s just being another Old Media hypocrite. No surprise there, then.
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