A journalist at the Daily Mail has been involved in Jihad story scandal after posing as an Islamist extremist on a Muslim Forum and trying to elicit responses in support of a Jihad from Muslims so as to write a story portraying Muslims living in the West as open to hate, terrorism, violence and war.
His plans backfired however after savvy Muslim members of the forum traced his IP address and discovered it emerged from DailyMail headquarters in London.
Tompride reports:
The following comment was posted on an online chat forum for Muslims yesterday inviting responses:
Some of the other members of the forum became suspicious by the strange comment and decided to check the new member’s ISP address:
More up-to-date checks of the ISP address by other members of the forum showed the comment was posted by someone working at the Daily Mail Group (the Evening Standard used to be part of the Daily Mail Group):
The whole thread has now been deleted from the forum but it can still be viewed on Google’s webcache here.
So it seems the Daily Mail ordered one of their journalists to pose as an extremist on a Muslim forum to try to elicit comments they could use for an anti-Muslim story.
Fortunately they were busted.
In a civilised society, a national newspaper journalist trying to stir up hatred and controversy with lies and subterfuge should be so professionally shameful it would normally lead to the sack for the hack concerned and investigations into standards of journalistic accountability at the publication.
At the Daily Mail – it’s just another day at the office.