Daily Star and Islamophobia

For those people who think Muslim's are paranoid and wrongly blame the media for all of their ills, the following article in the Guardian (4 March 2011) might be of interest. The Guardian write about the resignation of Richard Peppiatt, a Daily Star employee who cites false anti-Islamic reporting as one of the reason's he can no longer work for the ahem...newspaper (it actually hurts to call it that):

The Daily Star has been accused of printing fictional stories by a disgruntled reporter who has resigned over its "hatemongering" anti-Muslim propaganda.

The reporter, who was once made to dress up in a burqa, now accuses the paper of inciting racial tensions and Islamaphobia. "You may have heard the phrase 'the flap of a butterfly's wings in Brazil sets off a tornado in Texas'," Peppiatt wrote to the proprietor, Richard Desmond, in a letter seen by the Guardian.

"Well, try this: 'The lies of a newspaper in London can get a bloke's head caved-in down an alley in Bradford.' If you can't see that words matter, you should go back to running porn magazines."

The EDL story is one of a number of prominent articles published by the Star that Peppiatt claims were made up, including some of his own. The reporter was recently involved in stories claiming Rochdale council had spent taxypayers' money on "Muslim-only squat-hole loos". In fact, the toilets were neither paid for by the local authority or "Muslim-only".

"I was tasked with writing a gloating follow-up declaring our post-modern victory in 'blocking' the non-existent Islamic cisterns of evil," Peppiatt wrote. The Press Complaints Commission later ruled the story was inaccurate and misleading.

You can read the full article here and the see the text of the resignation letter here.