Galloway - media slurs, as ever

George Galloway's amazing election victory in Bradford has been predictably trashed by the Westminster clique and its service media.

While talking party heads uttered automated excuses and dismissals - 'lessons learnt', 'must take notice', 'one-off win' etc - much of the liberal media derided Galloway's historic win as 'exploitation' of the Muslim community and an 'opportunist playing of the race card'.

The Guardian's Patrick Wintour was out early with a scurrilously-worded script full of cheap slurs on Galloway's 'Islamic-grounded' victory:

"It appeared that the seat's Muslim immigrant community had decamped from Labour en masse to Galloway's fundamentalist call for an immediate British troop withdrawal from Afghanistan and a fightback against the job crisis."

The piece, replete with racist insinuations, was quickly amended (after being flagged-up on the Media Lens board). Thankfully, the excellent News Sniffer site was alert to the Guardian's cover-up, recording, for useful posterity, the hasty edit.

Meanwhile, the BBC's Nick Robinson could only see:

"An extraordinary result but surely a one-off political coup by a political one-off. George Galloway has proved that he has the charisma, the celebrity and the message to appeal to the young, the disillusioned and the angry particularly in the Muslim community."

Not, of course, an appeal to the rational, the peace-seeking and the wider Bradford community looking for credible alternatives to the austerity-imposing, warmongering parties.

The strong inference across most reportage was that Iraq, Afghanistan and other imperialist wars are now 'only a real issue in places like Bradford'. Nor, on Galloway's supposed 'race card' politics, was there much mention that it was Labour who had put up the Muslim candidate, Imran Hussein.

Later, in a perniciously-loaded interview, Cathy Newman on Channel 4 News tried to browbeat Galloway with grudging, pedantic questions on 'previous notable swings' and 'undue comparisons' with the Arab Spring, an effort, as with previous media hatchet jobs ('Paxman video' here) duly seen-off by Galloway.

All of which reveals the darker nature of such self-esteemed reporters.

In contrast to Galloway's patient demeanour, the immediate instinct of the reporting herd is to move into hostile mocking mode. People like Galloway bring an effervescence, a colour, a charisma that seems both to fascinate and threaten the 'professional journalist'.

The liberal commentariat, in particular, appear intimidated by Galloway's populist politics and anti-war positions, a highly-sensible, rather than 'controversial', set of readings that sit uncomfortably with their own safely media-honed 'correspondence.'

And so, Galloway, misrepresented as ''one of the most divisive figures in Westminster politics", has again become the subject of every tortuous cliche, from the Big Brother 'cat performance' to the 'indefatigability' quote.

On cue, Galloway was also traduced across the media as a 'friend of dictators'. Yet, never do we hear similar discussion of Cameron, Obama and their like being loyal friends of dictators in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and other Middle East regimes, not to mention the special protection reserved for Netanyahu, the region's most murderous villain.

If only our 'vanguard-liberal' media would speak with probing honesty about the real controversial politicians and war criminals in our midst.

John

Update: some more Guardian smears.