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Ofcom rejects complaints about Muslim Channel 4 News presenter

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By Jessica Goodfellow, Media Reporter

August 22, 2016 | 4 min read

Communications regulator Ofcom has rejected complaints made against Channel 4 News for allowing a Muslim presenter to front the broadcaster’s coverage of the Nice terror attack.

Fatima Manji

Fatima Manji

The complaints were kicked off by the Sun’s columnist Kelvin MacKenzie when the former Sun editor published an article titled "Why did Channel 4 have a presenter in a hijab fronting coverage of Muslim terror in Nice?".

Mackenzie asked “Was it appropriate for [Fatima Manji] to be on camera when there had been yet another shocking slaughter by a Muslim?”, “Was it done to stick one in the eye of the ordinary viewer who looks at the hijab as a sign of the slavery of Muslim women by a male-dominated and clearly violent religion?”.

Despite MacKenzie sparking the debate with his controversial column, he did not submit a complaint to Ofcom. The regulator received 17 complaints challenging the appropriateness of allowing a hijab-wearing presenter to front coverage of the Nice attack.

The Sun deleted a tweet leading to the story, claiming at the time it did so because it failed to attribute to piece to MacKenzie. The article is still live on the Sun's site. It was widely condemned by Channel 4 and the NUJ, and sparked more than 800 complaints to IPSO.

Channel 4’s chief marketing and communications officer Dan Brooke told The Drum: "I don’t care for his remarks very much and I think I share that with many people in Britain.

"One of the things that I am frankly unhappy about is the post-Brexit referendum world in which we live seems to have given more people than before somehow permission to go out and abuse people on the street because of the colour of their skin, what they might perceive to be their nationality or for some other characteristic that they can’t do anything about, and that is wrong."

The presenter Fatima Manji responded to MacKenzie’s column, saying it was “but one wild screed in a long-running and widespread campaign to intimidate Muslims out of public life”. She wrote that one and a half billion Muslims were the subject of MacKenzie’s column, by suggesting that they are “inherently violent”.

Ofcom today (22 August) told journalists that the 17 complaints will not be taken forward for investigation, since it does not breach broadcasting code.

“We received a small number of complaints that it was inappropriate for a presenter wearing a hijab to present a report on the attack in Nice,” said a spokesman for Ofcom.

“We won’t be taking the matter forward for investigation. The selection of a presenter is an editorial matter for the broadcaster, and the way in which the presenter chose to dress in this case did not raise any issues under our rules.”

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