The story “New race storm for Channel 4” by Emma Cox and John Troup is about another supposed ‘race row’ started on a Channel 4 programme aired on Sunday (21st Jan 2007). But whereas the row sparked by Jade Goody’s bullying on Celebrity Big Brother raised almost 50,000 complaints across the nation and sparked rioting in some Indian Cities. But with less than 200 complaints two days after the fact, this is more like the second firework that never really went off.
For a start The Sun is a day late on the story. In the Media Guardian of the 22nd January a small story was written about the chatter in the ‘Shipwrecked’ (the show in question’s) web forum about a young contestant’s comments about the British Empire and the issue of slavery.
It is a classic example of bandwagon journalism that the popular press can’t seem to help themselves getting into. The argument against a story like this is that the first story was tenuously in the public interest to begin with. But where the Jade Goody story has sparked (in more responsible outlets) a debate about the state of racism in Britain today; this story only serves as fuel on the fire of hatred. This girl is not an enemy, as this article seems to portray; she is an innocent whose narrow upbringing is brought into question not the person herself.
Even on the online copy of this story the favoured tool of the tabloid press: the bold typeface is used to stir emotion in the reader. My argument against tactics such as this is that if the audience knows that the outlet is using it to manipulate and the outlet knows this then doesn’t that make such things totally redundant?
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