A leaked internal email shows a senior BBC executive reaching for the language of “solidarity” after a Sudanese asylum seeker was charged with trying to brutally murder a Northern Irish man in the street. The corporation’s instinct was not to dwell on the victim, but instead to soothe colleagues “who have come to Northern Ireland and the UK from other countries.”
A local man is carved up on a Belfast pavement, unrest follows, and the state broadcaster act as if the real emergency is that imported staff might feel “particularly vulnerable.”
Investigative journalist Steven Edginton published the leak on Friday. Jack Whyte, the BBC’s Chief Technology Officer, wrote to staff after the backlash that followed the attack on Stephen Ogilvie. Whyte said he wanted to “express our solidarity with colleagues who may feel particularly vulnerable or fearful at this time, including those who have come to Northern Ireland and the UK from other countries.”
He condemned “hatred, intimidation, and violence in all its forms” and added that the BBC is “committed to fostering an environment where every colleague feels supported, included, and able to bring their whole self to work.”
Whyte’s wording is a tell. “Including those who have come to Northern Ireland and the UK from other countries” is the only group specified. Native staff who watched a man carved up on a Belfast street are left to infer that their fear does not count as vulnerability. Their anxiety is “hatred” adjacent, while the imported colleague’s anxiety is a welfare priority.
A source inside the corporation put the omission in plainer English: “The BBC offered solidarity to foreign staff but not to native Brits who might be worried about illegal migrants beheading them.”
Hellbound and Down 