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June 4, 2021 - 11:50am
When 49.1 million viewers tuned in to watch the Harry and Meghan interview on Oprah, the drama that unfolded left many victims — not all famous or royal — in their wake. One such casualty was Ian Murray, the head of the Society of Editors, who came out to defend the British press against the claim made by the Duke of Sussex that the industry was racist. According to a statement put out by Murray, such an “attack” was “not acceptable” without any evidence. Following the statement came a now-infamous interview with Victoria Derbyshire, in which Murray got into a heated row with the interviewer over whether certain headlines could be construed as racist.
In spite of a second statement issued by the Society of Editors, the damage was already done: over 160 journalists of colour and the editors of the Guardian, Financial Times and HuffPost wrote an open letter describing the SoE’s initial statement as “laughable” proof of “an institution and an industry in denial”. This left Murray in the strange predicament of being attacked by the people he was trying to defend. Meanwhile, an ITV presenter and editor of the Yorkshire Post both pulled out of the Society of Editors awards.
Effectively, the executive director was left with no choice but to resign from the organisation he helped to found some 22 years prior. In an exclusive interview with UnHerd, Murray finally speaks out and give his version of events: does he regret the statement? Is the British press racist? And what does it feel like when the mob comes for you? He discusses all this and more in today’s LockdownTV:
On why needed to leave:
Why did his statement cause such a furore:
On the show trial that followed:
On the current climate:
Does he stand by his statement?
Why did the press turn on Meghan?
On the health of the free press:
How does he feel?
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Subscribe“But there is also disappointment with some others that I thought were friends or associates who ran for the hills. And it quickly dawns on you, that your reputation has been shredded in some ways, that it’s been tarnished.”
Being disappointed by those you previously thought were friends or associates, or at least a bit more courageous is an awful feeling. But at the end of the day, I think Murray will come out looking better than they do. They are cowards and run with the other sheep to protect themselves from harm. Fair enough. Murray was much braver and is thus far more deserving of respect.
Ian Murray’s former friends and associates are a classic example of what Winston Churchill called ‘one who feeds a crocodile , hoping it will eat him last.’ The entire population of the world who identify as originally European is 6% and according to many of the other 94% this is 6% too many as an example the DM today reprinted parts of a speech given by a Yale professor which openly shows this attitude.This new world order will only be satisfied with total destruction of European life and culture. Meghan is part of a group who enjoy showing their power & need total obedience Surely seeing a President who told a jury which verdict he wanted before the trial began was evidence of this?. This is the end of the European enlightenment which guaranteed a free press if everyone just caves into the opposition.
If he is high up in the Press he got petarded. He is like the Florida man, meth head, whose own pit-bull just bit him on the a**.
Well, yes, but we knew that all along. And initially, of course, the media and everyone else welcomed the fact of a coloured member of the ‘firm’. Sadly, she turned out to be a real grifter and a real wrong ‘un by any standards.
Great if you don’t particularly want the white world mulatto-ised, though.
Well she’s technically a quadroon, and Archie is therefore an octoroon, which is some way short of mulatto in either case.
There is probably fifty shades of that, too.
lol
She decided to identify as 100% black on the day of her wedding-thats why she could only have her mother there-as other 3/4 of her family would contradict her message of being a member of a persecuted group. She & Harry arranged all these television things-interview & series with Oprah then & seemed to have persuaded the palace the series was about mental illness in the armed forces.As Oprah and friends are very key democrat supporters and have succeeded in getting their ‘girl’ in as Vice-President nothing must go wrong.. The interview & series syncronized with BLM message-white privilege & all that which has now taken over all the areas of power, now you only have to claim something for it to be ‘your truth’-no evidence required. Wouldn’t surprise me if Queen resigns & appoints Harry & Meghan as King & Queen-things are that weird.
Her Oprah interview is a successful version of the Jussie Smollett incident. They have learnt to be non specific this time so cannot show evidence to disprove-how can you prove a negative? Smollett’s mother was friends with Kamala Harris & Angela Davis-the same ‘actors’ and message-but to a wider audience.
It’s a racket, but we don’t get to say so. Shooting ducks in a barrel, this is a good earner!
Meghan means to take the throne, become President of the U.S. and finally General Secretary of the U.N. Harry might have completed his therapy by then.
She looks like an octoroon to me. Has anyone ever seen her jailbird mother Doria’s parents?
That would, of course, make Archie an hexadecaroon.
Good or bad and no grey areas between or roads to redemption. This is a world which none of us can live comfortably in.
This article is instructive:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/post-factualism-and-politics-of-confusion/
If you want to understand why it is that the assortment of movements that come together to make up the new Left in politics are adopting a zero tolerance approach toward dissent that falls into certain categories (racism, homophobia etc), then read it.
The author makes some very interesting points about the politics of confusion but undermines his own efforts by failing to recognise that they are being used by the left as well as the right in the UK.
it seemed to this reader that he is arguing for a forward march to reclaim lost voters starting from a base which has already effectively outlawed a platform for views he has decided are heretical.
What you are guilty of, Mr. Murray, is heresy. Pure (and simple) heresy.
Certain matters, you see, are already settled, and no further discussion is necessary (or permitted).
There is a rather enjoyable irony at work here: the very politics of confusion that are said to be the preserve of the right (notwithstanding their origin, at least in the current form, in Putin’s Russia) are used to enforce taboos on the rest of us.
The BLM movement is an example of the politics of confusion in action. The name, and the broad thrust of the proposed narrative (soon to become the enforced narrative), is intended to disorientate, and to prevent counter by way of argument or action.
It is impossible to state that black lives do not matter, and only possible to agree with the idea that black lives matter. Because it is only possible to agree, any qualification and equivocation is taken, and described as, evidence of insincerity – ie, you are a racist after all. All fall before the eminently logical and entirely manipulative thrust.
Quite right about wilfully confusing names. Take “hope not hate” – which in three words skews the migration / asylum debate and leaves no room for dissent at all. In fact, the pressure group should be called “Pie eyed optimism not due precaution”, but even that does not plumb the depths of Marxist malice lurking at its heart. For the pie eyed are just the surface constituency, the angry dupes who imagine that their tearful ranting embodies “compassion”. No, the real name of the pressure group is “manipulative moralising with a view to destroying western culture”, for that is the agenda at its rotten heart. And in the end, along with the whole Marxist mob currently running the west, it wishes to make dupes or internal exiles of us all. And even silence, even a refusal to join the tearful ranting, now carries costs.
Oh yes, ‘Hope not Hate’.
Is it Marxism? I nurse a hunch that it’s mostly radical Islam in disguise these days.
If I were a radical islamist and I was running out of ideas, I might be tempted to pretend to be a Marxist in order not to be banned.
Or it might be the Chinese state. That lot seem to have made glove puppets out of most social, political and economic organisations in the West. God knows who they own.
Or it could be the Russians, who used to be rather good at subverting the decadent West (although not so good they could prevent the collapse of Soviet communism).
Who knows. I wish we could have a clear out though.
I looked at up with a degree of enthusiasm, sadly this article is heavy work and it didn’t hold my attention- shame …
Yes, it is heavy work. All left wing diatribe is. Like wading through treacle while wearing a rubber coat and a gas mask.
What was interesting for me, chiefly, was the flagging of the politics of confusion.
You see, this is so important one cannot be too serious about it, in order to avoid having a stroke. One needs to be light hearted, jokey even, because this country, and many others beside, are sailing into the abyss, blown there by the politics of confusion.
Boris Johnson practices the politics of confusion. He is reported to have told Cummings that he rather likes chaos because it makes people look to him for leadership.
Any idea how deeply sinister this is? It is the ABC of despotism, nothing less.
He is getting away with it because so few people know what he is doing.
He can even be upfront about it, as happened in Russia, because the concept is too difficult for most people to grasp.
The key imperative, in my view, is to find a way to persuade people to look properly at this idea, the politics of confusion, and to make efforts to really see its practitioners for who they are.
This should concern left and right equally, and should not be used by one side as a stick to beat the other.
You are quite correct that they are ‘being used by the left’.For example the more the press laugh at Biden’s age & frailty the more his supporters feel justified in voting for him. The Bidens are like that nice old couple you meet at the theatre , museums etc-usually academic. He is usually onto his second marriage-he married one of his students-doesn’t the Biden story fit into the middle-class democrat supporters story-they can identify with them.They also feel comfortable with Kamala Harris as she is from a middle-class academic background. They can support affirmative action with no payment to themselves by having her-look how tolerant this country is-Obama & now Harris they say from their nice safe homes-far from the ghetto.
Sigh … I’m getting so fed up of waiting for the MSM to come to their senses. Will their tiresome stupidity never end?
NO. And look how Unherd has become a mere fluff rag, all ex-Guardian type human condition writers in its stable. No Economics writers, although the globe economy is balanced on a knife edge with a dozen new economic paradigms pulling at it. No ‘NEWS’ no actual political Journalists, just political editorials which try to walk the center. It is all womans issues, culture, lifestyle and so on, with a anti-woke leaning as its claim to being un-herd.
That they are firing all us who will not join is good and fitting.
Racism n. the dehumanisation of the natural right of non-Jewish white skinned people to defend their life and homeland from non-white aggression.
Have you got a dictionary in the pipeline? Just curious.
I thought racism was a special form of hatred and fear of difference, of the ‘other’.
How about over 90% of UN resolutions condemning majority Jewish countries?
Never mind the
points raised in the article，some of the comments here make me feel ashamed to be English; good grief, “mulatto”, “octoroon” (Redman, I’m looking at you)?
I live in France, which has a lot to learn about tolerance – the UK is probably the least racist place on Earth, and its press, although horribly tainted, is, in my opinion, not guilty in this case.
Oh, be off with you. How many words for black have there been that the grievance industry has gone on to decide they don’t like after all? Who gave these cretins (Beardshall, I’m looking at you) authority to police our language?
They no longer like “negro”, they no longer like “coloured” as in “coloured people”, but weirdly “people of colour” is just fine. They don’t like “blackboard”, they don’t like “blacklist”, they don’t even like “niggardly” because it sounds like a word they don’t like even though it predates the word they don’t like by about 1,000 years. Of course, they can use these terms themselves but white people can’t. Whether something is racist or not depends on the race of the racist.
Gimme a b|00dy break.
The reason they don’t like ‘quadroon’ or ‘octoroon’ or ‘hexadecaroon’ is that these terms are accurate descriptors that undermine attempts by the likes of Meghan to identify as something they’re not. I absolutely guarantee you that very soon, they won’t like “mixed race” or “black” (or “Muslim”) either, that we’ll all have to call them “people of black” or some stupid new thing, and you Stanley will be a hindsight racist for ever having used the word “black”.
They are just giving back some of what they are getting. Just calling an insult back at the bully from a safe place. The Media, the Politicos, the entertainment and Education industries, the MSM, the Social Media has been hurling accusations at them for being racist, so they are just responding by using the actual words which have been put in their mouths. They are teasing. Can you not understand that?
I am concerned about Meghan’s genderism . She told us all that she would be raising gender free children. Yet here she is, proclaiming that she has a son and a daughter!
It is amusing that MeghanHarry are now taking time off…not because we ask, “from what?”, but because it is another move to say that we are unavailable for questions—after dropping another magnificent bombshell—taking away the specialness of The Queen’s intimate nickname. They birthed Merchie and now Besmirchie, showing their love of lucre and revenge.
I mean, The Queen is all about her faith and duty, and MeghanHarry first set up their child with a foundation, and then decided they won’t christen the child. And they get enabled in lovely Montecito.
Looking at it as a Swiss, I find the English tabloids extremely disrespectful, hurting anyone’s feelings no matter their skin color. Meghan said so in an earlier interview after her South African trip, nobody really seemed to care how hurt she was, bc that‘s just how the tabloids are. And then she hit the nail with the racist accusation, and really just turned the press against each other. I find it a clever move.
Was complaining about her lot in South Africa a good look though? It seemed more than a bit tone deaf to me. Yes, the British press can be awful but she wasn’t singled out anymore than anyone else. Anyone hawking environmental pablum while flying around on private jets is going to be criticized.
The racism accusation is just a tactic to deter criticism. She has tried it in the US as well. Meghan is not exempt from criticism because she is black. She is also not exempt from criticism over environmental hypocrisy, which she clearly didn’t like. But it wasn’t undeserved.
As a person who loathes wokery, I nonetheless witnessed a huge deluge of disgraceful press towards Megan from early on which was completely disproportionate to the ‘crime’. Anything and everything was seized on and chewed over by the media and a baying mob of the public – themselves oblivious to the fact that many of them are critical of baying mobs. There is no ‘one truth’ here. Maybe some introspection and discernment is required from all sides.
I agree with this – I haven’t got a lot of time for either of them but some of the media coverage was deeply unpleasant in my view.
I agree with you, Lesley. However, there was also a lot of reporting on Meghan which was labelled racist when it was simply critical.
Katherine, it went beyond ‘critical’. So there was something else at the heart of it. In the absence of anything else, it is perhaps reasonable to say ‘race’. What else? American?
What went beyond critical? It seems like you cannot give even one example.
It is deeply unacceptable to play the race card when you don’t understand the motives of someone who criticises.
If the same criticisms are issued by people of the same ethic make-up as the “target”, are they racists too ?
Obnoxious?
But was it racist?
She wasn’t disliked because she was black, though. She was disliked because she is very, very dislikeable.
She refused to accept not being taken at her own self-regarding estimation of herself, and therefore played the race card. It suits her better to kid herself that she’s suffered racism than to concede that she’s a thick, selfish, disloyal, narcissistic, dishonest, scheming, money-grubbing cow.
Actress = egoist.
She was never likely to subject herself to somebody else’s ruleset. She would have gone into the marriage expecting the royal family to bend to suit her.
Predictable disaster.
It’s amazing how many people applaud this sort of hate-filled abuse.
If “the left” are sometimes guilty of virtue signalling, what would this be called? Vice signalling?
What would be an example of this disgraceful press toward Meghan early on? What was she criticized for? Perhaps we just didn’t see it in the US but from here the media seemed very admiring of her.
It was Annette. I’d go so far as to say that some people felt this was the dawn of something very special. Harry was extremely popular and his bride excitingly different. Things started to go wrong in a simple way, such as in refusing to share their new baby with the public in the time honoured manner of the Royal Family.
Of course, looking at Megan’s relationships with her family should have alerted those whose responsibility it is to know such things that the
Sussex’s ship was never going to stay in untroubled waters.
That’s how it looked from here as well. Everyone seemed very happy that Harry had found someone he loved. I’m sure she wasn’t happy playing second fiddle to Kate Middleton but there is a pecking order and she certainly must have known that from the outset.
refusing to share any information about their baby in the royal family manner was not early on. Lesley keeps saying these disgraceful press comments were early on.
Annette I followed the British press and comments to witness it.
The comments aren’t the same as the article. There were numerous items in the Daily Mail showing her in each of the expensive outfits Prince Charles ( why not Prince Harry? ) paid for. The newspaper likes to report gossip , but it seems they chose not to print some of worse criticisms of her from her own staff.The ‘cryingate’ story was printed as being her fault , but they were all alleged happenings.As Meghan seems to read & watch every item about herself ( which is how she got Morgan the sack) she would probably prefer the press was more like that of North Korea.
I wouldn’t classify highlighting her wardrobe as disgraceful press comments. After all the same thing happens to Kate Middleton and lots of glamorous women.
I meant that was favourable coverage. As an actress she must have received bad reviews and comments on her clothes.The royals get a lot of bad press-however the new order-which she is part of -take a third world attitude-everything must be over the top praise-they only like the press as sycophants.
So what were the disgraceful press comments from early on, that’s what I was asking. You keep saying there were disgraceful press comments early on but you have not been able to point to even one.
There weren’t any-Meghan was written about as a breath of fresh air , the royal family is delighted to welcome this new member etc.The wedding coverage was adoring and uncritical. The press supressed stories of her bad behaviour to staff and instead used ‘cryingate’ to suggest knowledge of something but, to most people it was just women arguing over socks. The press must have checked out her background & know how political she is & how this wouldn’t fit with impartiality necessary for royal life.-so their break with the royal family can’t have come as much as a surprise to them.
You must have seen what I failed to notice.
What I saw was, more or less, a celebration of the fact that he had chosen to marry someone with a different ethnicity.
How could discussion of her race be avoided when it was so unprecedented? I thought there was a general agreement that it was bringing the Royal Family into the modern age.
Perhaps I missed the racism, though. I don’t read the papers that much these days.