The British National Party want to take adverts out in next week's paper, and we've had to think hard about the right course of action.
We do accept political adverts, hence Steve O'Connell and Boris Johnson appearing on the back page of last week's paper.
The BNP are a legitimate political party and will no doubt argue they should have the same right as the others.
But we've turned them away on the basis I'd feel deeply uncomfortable with any of their material appearing in our publications.
The Advertiser is strictly non-political - all parties seem to hate us equally - but I'm happy to make an exception in the case of the BNP.
There are many legitimate issues and concerns surrounding immigration, and we're not afraid to address these.
But whatever questions there are about asylum, I doubt the BNP's policies are the answer.
14 comments:
Im pleased with your reasoning and agree, the Advertiser was set up as a Liberal and liberal paper and has always trod that path well.
This election is about London and all the issues that your paper so well covers. The cornerstone of the BNP is their clear racism and hate.
The Advertiser also plays a crucial role in upping turnout. turnout is the only real way to stop the BNP getting seats on the Assembly.
First you take political advertisements, then you venture comment on legitimacy in politics then you claim to be politically secular then you spurn a political party. You need to make your mind up.
All that arse tunnelling has addled your brain.
Pip pip..
As BBC2's White Season showed, the white working class are a semi-literate moronic bunch of drunken chavs who are likely to be incited to who knows what acts of violence if they are exposed to BNP propaganda.
There should be absolutely no platform for these skin-headed Hitler-worshippers in the press, TV, radio or public meetings.
Congratulations on doing the right thing in denying them the oxygen of publicity.
- Baligha
It's a difficult debate. As you say there are issues surounding immigration, but the BNP is never the answer.
The white working classes feel very unrepresented. All manner of Muslim groups can say what the hell they like without fear of censorship, surely this should extend both ways.
More on NO PLATFORM. At 6.00pm GMT our brothers and sisters launched a Da'wa outreach Service (DoS)at the BNP website http://www.bnp.org.uk/. The razzia was successful and the website is unavailable and in shā' Allāh should remain permanently disabled.
- Baligha
I think you will find if you look back over recent years that the 'white working class' or whatever you want to call them are now properly represented.
The pendulum has swung back to the centre ground where 'white' people are recognised as the majority population of this country without then making any racist remarks around that very real fact.
Too often in the past the media pretended that the whole of the UK was like parts of London or Manchester or wherever where in some pockets the majority population is non white.
Even 'Asian Bradford' is 78% white.
So no need to be scared of Britain loosing its heritage etc.
Read the BNP website and you soon see that the BNP is not interested in a real debate on immigration.
They often use a picture of 1945 East End and then put that untypical picture of two Muslim Women in full head scarf using the hand sign 'V'.
They ignore the fact that the East End has been the home of many minorities over centuries and many people in that picture are probably Jewish etc.
They ignore the fact that the Second World War had many troops from India, Caribbean and elsewhere fighting for freedom from tyranny - the type of tyranny that the BNP propagate today.
Our Freedom was hard won, and hard won for the whole of Europe and the world. The BNP are from another time and from another era that we should be proud of defeating then and we should be proud to defeat them today.
But if the BNP are as bad as you say, then why not let them have a voice so all can see? Why deny local people the right to judge the BNP for themselves?
Clearly you have no faith in the democratic process or your readership if you feel you have to censor what they read.
And what makes your personal political opinion so important anyway? Would you buy a newspaper if you knew the editor didn't trust you form your own opinion? Who censors what you read?
James, fair comments. If it wasn't a debating point it wouldn't have warranted a mention in the first place.
It's not a question of censorship though - we're talking about an advert, not a story. There would not be a ban on covering the BNP editorially during the election.
And we not just talking about the Advertiser, which people have a choice about seeing. It would also have gone into the Croydon Post, which is delivered free to 100,000 homes across the borough.
Ian
You feel uncomfortable about the BNP and you get annoyed with those who say that the Croydon Advertiser does nothing to enhance the borough's reputation.
The series of comments below the "Is this Croydon's worst home?" story could be straight from some BNP leaflet and certainly do nothing to enhance the borough's reputation.
Agreed, we've taken the most offensive ones down. It's a balance between having a 'live' messageboard and hosting offensive content.
Done it again! Tonight's DoS attack has shut down the Nazi's website. Try visiting http://www.bnp.org.uk and know humiliation, Najis Kufr!
This is the traditional editorial dilemma between freedom of speech on the one hand and publishing (potentially unlawful) divisive bigotry on the other. However, should this balance not be determined by the content of individual advertisements? Many of your readers (this one included) feel inherently awkward about the BNP. However, this is based on its reputation, its projected image (which it does little to counter) and the overt thuggery of some of those claiming to be associated with it. Even if through gritted teeth, we have also to acknowledge that two people associated with the BNP were acquitted of racial unpleasantness last year. So, if an advert simply says that we should vote for the BNP because it has sensible economic policies, should that be banned or would that be to deny an organisation the opportunity to put a legitimate case to the electorate? If they said that these sensible economic policies would save sufficient money forcibly to repatriate (implicitly non-WASP) immigrants, then that could legitimately be viewed as working against local community spirit. It would thus be justifiable not to run that advert. As it happens, I suspect that commercial pragmatism, as much as anything else, has informed your decision. You rightly recognise that (a) Croydon is a richly diverse community and (b) if you run BNP stuff, you'll lose readers and advertising revenue. Final result: God 0 Mammon 1. So, right decision, wrong argument.
Well reasoned up until the end, when you make a bit of a presumption. I don't honestly believe running BNP adverts would have cost readers OR revenue. It may have caused some controversy, but it usually takes more than that to drive people away. I simply felt it was the wrong thing to take money from a party that, whether it likes it or not, attracts the sympathies of some unpleasant people. As I said in a previous answer, they will be covered editorially, albeit through gritted teeth.
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