A major victory for truth and common sense. “Police apologise over mosque show,” from the BBC, May 15 (thanks to all who sent this in):
West Midlands Police and the Crown Prosecution Service have apologised for accusing the makers of a Channel 4 documentary of distortion.
The apology and the promise of £100,000 were made at the High Court on Thursday.
It follows comments made about a Dispatches programme, Undercover Mosque, which tackled claims of Islamic extremism in the West Midlands.
The police statement said the force was wrong to make the allegations.
A press release issued by the police and the CPS in August 2007 claimed the Dispatches programme, broadcast in January of that year, misrepresented the views of Muslim preachers and clerics with misleading editing.
One preacher was shown saying a homosexual should be thrown off a mountain, another that women were born deficient.
Police also reported Channel 4 to television watchdog Ofcom for “heavily editing” the words of Islamic imams.
But in November, Ofcom rejected the police and CPS claims, and Channel 4 said it was going to sue the CPS and police for libel.
‘Damage and distress’
The statement, released to the media after the High Court hearing by West Midlands Police, said they accepted there had been no evidence that Channel 4 or the documentary makers had “misled the audience or that the programme was likely to encourage or incite criminal activity”.
It added that the Ofcom report showed the documentary had “accurately represented the material it had gathered and dealt with the subject matter responsibly and in context”.
The police statement concluded: “We accept, without reservation, the conclusions of Ofcom and apologise to the programme makers for the damage and distress caused by our original press release.”…