Thursday, May 15, 2008

dhimmi police trounced: Police pay Channel 4 £100,000 damages for accusing station of faking undercover mosque footage

may 15th, 2008

a rare, and lovely, instance of dhimmitude rebounding on the perpetrators. take that, limey 'multiculturalist' vultures!

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Shah

Dhimmi police trounced!
 
14/05/08 - TV & showbiz section
 
Police pay Channel 4 £100,000 damages for accusing station of faking undercover mosque footage
By LAURA ROBERTS
 
Channel 4 has won £100,000 from a police force that falsely accused programme makers of faking television footage.
 
West Midlands Police will also apologise at the High Court following comments it published about a Dispatches programme entitled Undercover Mosque.
 
A press release issued by police and the Crown Prosecution Service in August last year claimed the programme misrepresented the views of Muslim preachers and clerics recorded undercover.
 
Police reported Channel 4 to the TV watchdog Ofcom for "heavily editing" the words of imams to give them a more sinister meaning, citing five instances.
 
Ofcom rejected the complaints in a decision published in November 2007.
 
Police spent around £14,000 on the investigation, which first looked at whether three of the individuals shown in the programme could be prosecuted for inciting terrorism or racial hatred.
{R}
 
But they later announced offences may have been committed by Channel 4, specifically in stirring up racial hatred.
 
Police claimed the programme, broadcast in January 2007, undermined "community cohesion" and "feelings of public reassurance".
 
Documentary excerpts from preachers and teachers included "Allah created the woman deficient" and "by the age of ten, it becomes an obligation on us to force her to wear hijab and if she doesn't wear hijab, we hit her".
 
Despite Ofcom's conclusion that the documentary was a "legitimate investigation, uncovering matters of important public interest", West Midlands Police failed to take down the original press release, entitled Broadcast Out Of Context, from its website.
 
The failure prompted Channel 4 to take legal action due to the "seriousness of allegations of fakery for professional journalists and broadcasters".
 
West Midlands Police and the CPS were expected to apologise for the damaging investigation in court this morning.
 
A statement admitted they "were wrong to make these allegations", adding: "There was no evidence that the programme makers had misled the audience or that the programme was likely to encourage or incite criminal activity."
 
According to legal insiders the police and CPS paid £50,000 in costs and £50,000 in damages to programme makers Hardcash Productions and Channel 4. The money was donated to the Rory Peck Trust - a charity that helps families of freelance correspondents killed on assignment.
 
Kevin Sutcliffe, deputy head of current affairs at Channel 4, said: "We have been very pleased to get the result.
 
"We are accused of faking by the police and the CPS, which carries an awful lot of weight.
 
"We had to take this course of action to show it is not true. We were completely baffled. What were they trying to achieve?
 
"Why did they go after the programme in such a way? It seems to us a large amount of public money and time spent trying to bring us down."
 
A spokesman for West Midlands Police said: "We have paid a sum agreed with the programme makers to a charity of their choice."
 
David Henshaw, executive producer and managing director of Hardcash Productions said: "This was a thorough and detailed one-hour documentary, made over nine months and at personal risk to the undercover reporter.
 
"The abhorrent and extreme comments made by fundamentalist preachers in the film speak for themselves.
 
"They later claimed they had been taken out of context - but no one has explained the correct context for arguing that women are 'born deficient', that homosexuals should be thrown off mountains and that ten-year-old girls should be hit if they refuse to wear the hijab."
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