Media campaigners condemned the right-wing trash tabloid Daily Star yesterday for running “highly inflammatory” stories against Britain’s Muslim community.

Over the last month, the paper has run stories with headlines including “BBC puts Muslims above You,” “Killjoys ban white Xmas,” “Poppies banned in terror hot spots,” “Muslim snub to forces’ and “Muslim nutters still preaching hate on our streets.”

In a letter to owner Richard Desmond and editor Dawn Neeson, Media Workers Against the War (MWAW) pointed out: “These headlines and the stories that go with them twist flimsy and misleading ‘evidence’ to pander to ignorance and prejudice against Muslims.”

National Union of Journalists general secretary Jeremy Dear noted that union members at the Daily Star have been at the forefront of campaigns against the use of their papers to publish material which goes against both the letter and spirit of the union’s code of conduct. “Journalists should not be forced to write articles that encourage discrimination and hatred in our society,” he added.

Muslim Association of Britain vice-president Mokhtar Badri regretted that any paper is running stories that don’t reflect the reality. “It is inflammatory to target a section of society in a way that only raises tensions between different sections of that society,” he said.

MWAW has also set up a petition which can be signed at http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/dailystar.

Morning Star, 25 November 2008