Back in November 2015 the Tell Mama ‘anti Islamophobia’ organisation, formed by the activist Fiyaz Mughal, went big on an allegation that a Muslim woman had been subjected to an incident of ‘hijab pulling’ in Birmingham. Tell Mama reported that the 18 year old student known in the press only as ‘Miss Choudhury’, had been attacked in Birmingham New Street.
Tell Mama ran this story and claimed it as an incident of ‘Islamophobia’ and appeared to base their claim soley on the word of Miss Choudhury herself with it seems very little corroboration from other sources. This policy of taking things on trust and not doing much if any checking of the stories seems to be something that Tell Mama make rather a habit of. They appear rarely to check the allegations that pass their way and have even put non-credible mentally ill fantasisers up in front of representatives of the Crown Prosecution Service to back up Tell Mama’s claim that Britain is suffering from a massive amount of ‘Islamophobia’.
One thing that Tell Mama can be guaranteed to do, apart from lying and exploiting tragedies that is, is to never apologise. This is especially notable when it comes to the case of Miss Choudhury, where Tell Mama have been so badly caught out by a false claim that they really should think about apologising. It turns out that Miss Choudury had never in reality been attacked, had made the whole story up and wasted enormous amounts of police time in the process. Miss Choudhury was fined £90 for her lies and Tell Mama pulled Choudhury’s false story about the attack from their website. However, Tell Mama have not properly apologised for their promotion of this liar and her lies and that is something that I and others think that Tell Mama should do.
We’ve all screwed up whilst writing things, myself included, but it is better for the reputation of an organisation or an individual to come clean when this happens, put an apology note up either in place of, or accompanying, the original story and do everything possible to avoid similar things happening again. This is something that I’ve done when I’ve occasionally used a source that later turned out to be ‘non-credible’ but it is something that Tell Mama seem to find impossible to do. I don’t know why they don’t just say ‘sorry we screwed up’ and move on but Fiyaz Mughal’s Tell Mama organisation may not wish to draw attention to their other dubious stories by apologising for one particular dubious story?
So Tell Mama, why not make an honest apology for promoting the lying Miss Choudhury what have you got to lose by doing so? This is such an obvious case of your organisation being caught out by a false story that you really should be saying sorry for the inaccuracy. So let’s have it Fiyaz Mughal and Tell Mama. Let’s have an apology for being caught out, or are there many more equally dubious claims that you’ve made that also need some form of apology for?
Links
Daily Mail story of the lying Miss Choudury
The Tell Mama website
The story of Tell Mama’s ‘credible’ witness who ultimately lacked any credibility whatsoever
Thanks for highlighting. I wonder why Miss C’s first name was not given out? Seems rather strange to me….
Miss C’s first name was hidden at Miss C’s request by the police which is itself another example of Islamopandering by West Midlands Police