Last night’s clash between Newsnight‘s Jeremy Paxman and Dean Godson, the boss of think-tank Policy Exchange was a better contest than Ricky Hatton against Merryweather. But while the TV sparks that flew were bright, they also illuminated some darker corners of the media world we now inhabit.
In short, Newsnight accused Policy Exchange of publishing a report that contained falsified evidence. The original Policy Exchange think-tank report had alleged that a number of British mosques and community centres had extremist literature on sale. The Newsnight TV report appeared to show pretty conclusively that (a relatively small amount of) the evidence was fabricated – why and by whom was not established.
Dean Godson mounted a stout defence saying that the overall conclusions of the report were still valid, while Jeremy Paxman stated that it was difficult to believe any of it if at least part was proved false. It was not a pleasant bit of telly, with Godson coming over as vindictive and stubborn (he has always seemed pretty principled and sane to me) while Paxman ended up having to bluster in defence of his editor, Peter Barron.
This is a blow to Policy Exchange which was starting to make a name for itself with some brave and counter-intuitive thinking. This report in particular made a lot of headlines. Leftwing blogs like Labourhome are delighted at their discomfort, because Policy Exchange is now firmly in the Tory camp, despite an earlier sense that it was intellectually independent.
Osama Saeed (Scottish Muslim political blogger) is even more gleeful, and the posters on his site go on to make all sorts of interesting allegations which soon veer in to the conspiracy theory realm.
Harry’s Place is a bit more balanced and the posters there have some interesting theories on the use of ink-jet printers which reminds me of the whole right-wing blogosphere exposure of CBS/Dan Rather’s ‘fake’ Bush Killian documents.
Of course, Dean Godson has responded on his website and Peter Barron has done the same on the editor’s blog for Newsnight where he quite rightly concludes that:
Mr Godson says he stands by his report 100%. I also stand by our report 100%. I don’t think we can both be right.
The great thing about this whole dispute is how New Media allows us to get a whole range of reference points and detail. Godson was brave enough to go on Newsnight and make his case when he knew that the TV people had the power to package it in their own favour. But the bloggers and the websites have allowed us to make up our own minds.
Personally, I am sure that Policy Exchange probably did find some extremist literature in places where it should not be given shelf-room. They did well to take on this important investigation. But in this very sensitive area both journalists and think-tank researchers need to be 99% sure of their facts and credibility before they feed flames of community conflict. In this case Policy Exchange are now on shaky ground and bit more humility would have done them a power of good both on screen and in the real world.
Go here to see what their chairman Charles Moore wrote in their defence.
I think what is key, and what is not coming out in your blog, is that intellectual dishonesty is what this is all about. Policy Exchange bang on about being empirical, independent and academic but their methodology has been dismissed by university based researchers and they are clearly highly politicised.
That’s the problem. If they had been up front about their motives, then they would have been treated with the appropriate sense check and lobbying group is. But it’s because they cloaked themselves in the respectability of academia verging on deception that the whole episode is so interesting. Obviously now we know where they stand on these issues so I doubt we will see a similar controversy.
See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Policy_Exchange
For some interesting background.
Many blogs are raising questions pertaining to the methodology and approach taken by Policy Exchange in their reports about British Muslims.
The problems with his publication are diverse and at times extremely worrying writes owner of remarks and culture blog: http://tinyurl.com/2hs3n4
The report doesn’t take into any account whether the proliferation of this material has any bearing on the practice of Islam in this country but implies as much.
There is no coverage or mention of the distribution of far right and far left literature, both of which can contain the promotion of violence and/or separation.
The report does not adequately discuss a link between conservative/’radical’ positions and exhortations to violence. The report implies that Wahhabism/Salafism naturally lends itself towards terrorism. Statements such as “Yet more troubling is the possibility that such materials can act as a de facto ‘bridge’ to radicalisation.” and “Too often it acts as an ideological bridge to violent jihadism.” are not explored in any detail or in reference to existing evidence and research.
The evidence that is mentioned isn’t particularly robust. The report mentions that 5 of the booklets have been found by Metropolitan Police in terrorism investigations since 9/11 – We don’t get the figure of how many books the police service has looked at. The ‘radical’ material was found in only 26/100 places and out of those 26 they obtained 80 pamphlets. We don’t know the total sum of pamphlets on display to get an idea of what percentage this is.
There is no coverage of publications which they claim to be ‘non-radical’ or moderate despite the fact that these are in the majority. How are radical voices countered in other publications? This would have been an interesting analysis, but outside the bounds of fear creation.
Interestingly on pages 28-30 they name all the mosques in which they found hate literature – the far right British National Party will love this – this is like Megan’s law in the US where they name and shame paedophiles who then become victims of vigilantism. This naming and shaming will also have serious implications on access to these institutions future research, not to mention breaking trust and increasing scepticism. What happened to research ethics?
Gabriele Marranci, anthropologist at the University of Aberdeen has raised some questions, inviting the Policy Exchange to publicly answer them: http://tinyurl.com/39qw3w
How is it possible to conduct research, sometimes for weeks, in more than 100 mosques and Islamic institutions when the overall research was only 6 months?
How was the leading researcher of the overall project?
Why were the researchers only Pakistani, Somali, Bangladeshi and Arab?
Which qualifications had these researchers? Why are there not names mentioned?
Were the institutions and the people involved in the research, as well the informants, properly informed of the real intent of the research of studying ‘the extent to which literature inculcating Muslim separatism and hatred for the ‘non-believer’ was accessible in those institutions’?