Last week we blogged some of the responses to the Observer's investigation into radical links to some of the organisations that form the Muslim Council of Great Britain.
The response was substantial and diverse enough that we ran a special page of replies in last Sunday's newspaper. We also printed a response from Sir Iqbal Sacranie, Secretary-General of the MCB.
The broadcast last Sunday of the BBC Panorama film featured in our report renewed the debate over the MCB's role in representing Muslim opinion in Britain, it also fuelled an important debate over the portrayal of Muslims in the British media, in this case the BBC and The Observer.
On Monday the Observer and Panorama were accused in the Guardian of being part of an orchestrated campaign against Muslim Institutions in Britain. In the letters page the following day, John Ware, the reporter behind the Panorama programme, vigorously rejected the accusation. As do we.
In an email response to the piece Kamal Ahmed, Observer Head of News, said:
The MCB is a public body and should be open to criticism. To imply otherwise is patronising to both the MCB (suggesting they should be afforded some sort of special protection) and to us - the line that 'journalists must be careful' carries the suggestion that we have not been.
We took great care over our initial MCB story. We have never as an organisation portrayed Muslims and the Islamic faith in the news pages as 'other', nor have we ever suggested that Muslims are exclusively extremists. Quite the contrary ...
We continue to get a lot of correspondence, both in response to our original report, the Panorama programme and Sir Iqbal Sacranie's reply. We appreciate the feedback, positive and negative. Since the last blog post on the subject has been archived, here is another one - comments welcome. As last time, please keep it civil. Caps lock off.
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