To tweet or not to tweet? That is the question. And Alastair Stewart will be kicking himself for the rest of his life for his misjudged answer.
Alastair, the nation’s longest- serving male newsreader, stepped down from his ITV role this week after tweeting a Shakespeare quote during a row over the Royal Family.
The quote to follower Martin Shapland contained the words “angry ape”, which was all Martin needed to seize the spotlight, play the victim and accuse him of racism.
So in a matter of seconds, Alastair Stewart OBE went from talented journalist and broadcaster with more than 40years experience to being a racist because one black man on Twitter said so.
Alastair apologised for any harm he caused with the ape line from the play Measure For Measure, admitting it was “a misjudgment I regret”.
And he should regret ever joining Twitter – where you hold views on parenting, religion, race, politics and body image at your peril.
The place is a bear pit, with no end of users happy to poke the bear and twist their meaning.
And even the smartest people will rise to the bait.
I have worked with Alastair in the past and while I would say he was foolish to get into a Twitter scuffle with a member of the public, I know the man is
not a racist.
Tens of thousands of people have so far joined a petition calling for ITV to reinstate him, with an army of colleagues jumping to his defence too.
I find it appalling that people are calling out racism in situations where if you took a step back, breathed and looked at it, you could sensibly conclude there was no race agenda.
But instead, people are lobbing in comments and angry hashtags, stirring things up, publicly shaming innocent people.
Martin Shapland and people like him who want to play the race card to silence opinions they don’t agree with need to be very careful. Because it is these kind of oversensitive reactions that make a mockery of people who are facing genuine racism. It belittles their battles.
And on the other side, being called a racist when you are not one is devastating.
There is also the danger of making people too afraid to confront serious issues – reporting on them, asking for help, whistleblowing – if they involve ethnic minorities.
That is how the Asian grooming gangs in this country went unreported for years, ruining the lives of vulnerable girls, because the police were too scared to be labelled racists themselves.
Not everything has a racial dimension.
Yet we have reached this miserable place where anyone of colour is expected to view every comment and tweet through the prism of race.
And this kind of thinking is only going to divide us further.
