Thursday 21 March 2019

Few papers mention the Italian bus driver accused of trying to kill 51 children was Muslim

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The Italian bus driver who allegedly tried to burn to death fifty -one children in his bus is of Senegalese origin - and, we now learn, though not from the BBC or other respectable news sources like the Guardian, the Washington Post or the New York TimesMuslim

The unfairly maligned Daily Mail mentions both his religion and ethnicity. Breitbart hasn't so far mentioned the story at all.

The BBC gives the story prominence, though much less than it gives the six day old Christchurch massacre. The BBC account talks about the heroic immigrant child who bravely telephoned for help and saved everyone. The BBC quotes his father saying he hoped his son would now get Italian citizenship.

The BBC goes on to put the story into context for its readers:

During the hijacking, he [the suspect] reportedly told the captured schoolchildren he was prompted by the deaths of African migrants crossing the sea. A police spokesman also said that during the standoff, he had shouted "stop the deaths at sea, I'll carry out a massacre". 
Italy's government has taken a hard-line stance against migration from northern Africa, curtailing search and rescue operations - which humanitarian groups say endangers lives.
The BBC goes on sourly:
Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, a key architect of that policy, has referred to the suspect as "a Senegalese with Italian citizenship" rather than calling him an Italian.

You can feel the ice-cold disapproval of Mr. Salvini behind that sentence.

In the hands of the BBC the story is one of immigrant heroism and readers so inclined might decide that some of the blame for an attempt at mass murder rests with Matteo Salvini and Italian (white) racists.

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