ARE JOURNALISTS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE NEGATIVE CLOUD HANGING OVER ETHNIC YOUTHS?

On the 7th of December 2007, the Mayor of London hit back at Andrew Gilligan's article in the Evening Standard published on the 12th March 2007. The article 'Racism at the Met never gets the sack'. The article mixes together a number of points about the promotion of black police officers to claim spuriously that the Commissioner says the right things on race issues but that his actions don't match is words.

The Mayor of London tried his best to rebut these charges and to speak in defence of black organisations in London against sustained attack in the Evening Standard led by Andrew Gilligan.

In his statement Ken Livingstone said:

“London is a tolerant liberal city, and one of the greatest multi-ethnic cities in the world. It has not seen a press campaign of attacks on black people of the scale that were carried in the Evening Standard last week for over 20 years.

“The Evening Standard alleged, among other things, that the London Development Agency may have been intimidated by threats of gang violence by black people into giving out grants to organisations in which black people were the majority.

I must confess after reading this article, I was slightly uncomfortable because it is not just a Metroploitan Police issue it applies to but all sectors of the corporate world including Public realations sadly. What I failed to digest is the fact that the Met is recruiting substantially more police officers from black or minority ethnic backgrounds than ever before - this is purely based on a range of programmes designed to support the progression of under represented groups within the Service. The Met Police authority quite properly promotes senior officers on ability, not quotas of any kind, and shares the aspiration that officers in all ranks should better reflect London's diverse communities.

The PR and subsequently media industry needs to take a leaf out of Sir Ian Blair's book.

The MPS has come a long way in recent years in how it deals with race issues and their progress will continue to be hindered by ill-informed and inaccurate commentary of this kind

Lord Herman Ouseley said,

“Politicians and the media have an important responsibility not to whip up prejudice and hatred or to play the race card. We have seen a real abdication of that responsibility in recent days, with the attacks on black community organisations and a failure to condemn offensive language which belongs in the 19th, not the 21st century.

Can we afford to play the race card if we desperate for equality and how does this reflect on the British press if they are voluntarily willing to carry stories of these nature.

On the same day, I attend a unique ‘roundtable' discussion between young people, practitioners, policy makers and leading thinkers to explore practical solutions to tackling the criminalisation of young black people.

The roundtable, organised by King's College London School of Law and supported by the Greater London Authority (GLA) and the Stone Ashdown Trust, with the aim to conjure effective solutions to tackling the problem of the over representation of young black people in the criminal justice system and how they should be implemented.

I just found it incredibly ironic that as one group is working to build a sustainable community the most influential, the press is trying to destroy the foundations.