{"id":9231,"date":"2015-01-20T15:31:55","date_gmt":"2015-01-20T15:31:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tat.reddaisytrading.co.uk\/index.php\/2015\/01\/20\/bbc-trust-upholds-decision\/"},"modified":"2015-01-20T15:31:55","modified_gmt":"2015-01-20T15:31:55","slug":"bbc-trust-upholds-decision","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/2015\/01\/20\/bbc-trust-upholds-decision\/","title":{"rendered":"BBC Trust Upholds Decision"},"content":{"rendered":"
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National Secular Society Complains Against Asian Network<\/h3>\n
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The National Secular Society has welcomed a ruling from the BBC Trust upholding its complaint over the way in which the BBC framed a story concerning the allocation of places at a Sikh faith school as a \u2018race issue\u2019, rather than as\u00a0an issue of religious freedom.<\/font><\/div>\n

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Responding to the finding,\u00a0Stephen Evans, NSS campaigns manager, said, <\/font>\u201cThe conflation of race with religion\u00a0is highly problematic in that it seeks to\u00a0<\/font><\/font>stifle<\/font>\u200b<\/font>\u00a0<\/font>reasonable<\/font>\u00a0debate<\/font>\u00a0<\/font>by\u00a0equating\u00a0criticism\u00a0of religious ideas\u00a0<\/font>with racism and xenophobia.<\/font>\u00a0<\/font><\/font><\/div>\n

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“The repeated references to non-Sikh parents as \u201cwhite parents\u201d inaccurately framed\u00a0the story as a \u2018race issue\u2019\u00a0<\/font><\/font>\u200b<\/font>and clearly insinuated that the parents had racial \u2013 possibly even racist \u2013 reasons for their objections to their children attending this s<\/font>chool.<\/font><\/font><\/div>\n

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\u201cThe current shortage of school places, coupled with the spread of religious\u00a0free schools, means more and more children can expect to be allocated schools with a faith ethos against their parents\u2019 wishes. It\u2019s vital that parents can raise legitimate objections to their children being allocated places at minority faith schools without being portrayed as \u2018racist\u2019. <\/font><\/div>\n

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\u201cDesiring a secular education for your child has nothing to do with your ethnicity. I am pleased that the BBC has now recognised this.\u201d<\/font><\/div>\n

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A news package aired by BBC Asian Network on 23 April 2014, focussed on children of non-Sikh parents being allocated places at a Sikh faith school against their parents\u2019 wishes. In the piece, which featured NSS campaigns manager Stephen Evans, several non-Sikh parents expressed their unhappiness about their children being allocated places at Khalsa Secondary Academy, a Sikh ethos free school in South Buckinghamshire.<\/font><\/div>\n

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However, in promoting the story on social media, and in broadcast introductions, BBC Asian Network repeatedly referred to the non-Sikh parents as \u201cwhite parents.\u201d <\/font><\/div>\n

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In a formal complaint to the BBC, the NSS argued that the repeated reference to \u201cwhite parents\u201d left the clear insinuation that those parents had racial grounds for objecting to their children attending the school, when in fact the issue was one of religious freedom in education.<\/font><\/div>\n

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An initial complaint from the NSS was rejected by the BBC\u2019s Editorial Complaints Unit after BBC Asian Network\u2019s Head of News, Kevin Silverton, argued that the word \u201cwhite\u201d was used to make it clear the parents involved were \u201cnot Asian\u201d. He said an alternative such as \u201cnon-Sikh\u201d would have been inappropriate because that would usually be taken by the audience to refer to Hindus and Muslims. On appeal, the director of BBC\u2019s Editorial Complaints Unit said he was \u201cpersuaded by Mr Silverton\u2019s reasoning.\u201d<\/font><\/div>\n

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However, after an appeal to the Editorial Standards Committee to review the ECU\u2019s decision, the BBC Trust has upheld the complaint, agreeing that the story was about religious freedom in education and not about race, or racial prejudice.<\/font><\/div>\n

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Communicating its findings to the NSS, the BBC Trust said, <\/font>\u201c<\/em>The impression was given that white (rather than simply non-Sikh) parents objected to their children being sent to Sikh schools. This did not present an impartial account of the reasons for the parents\u2019 position. The Committee concluded that there had been a lack of due impartiality (albeit unwittingly and accidentally) in that it was implied that the parents\u2019 objections to faith education were on the grounds of race.\u201d<\/font><\/div>\n

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The Trust therefore upheld the NSS complaint on grounds of impartiality and accuracy.<\/font> The Committee did not uphold a complaint \u201cin relation to Fairness, Contributors and Consent\u201d, but the central premise of the NSS criticism has now been recognised by the BBC.<\/font><\/div>\n

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National Secular Society Complains Against Asian Network The National Secular Society has welcomed a ruling from the BBC Trust upholding its complaint over the way in which the BBC framed a story concerning the allocation of places at a Sikh faith school as a \u2018race issue\u2019, rather than as\u00a0an issue of religious freedom. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11753,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorised"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9231","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9231"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9231\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11753"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}