Whenever a minority group is outraged or perhaps contains elements responsible for an outrage, who do the media turn to for a sound-bite? Why of course to the “Community Leaders”. These self appointed spokesmen have become the voice of minorities, and often reflect the very worst that any group has to offer.
But who are these so-called community leaders? I suspect that the phrase is a convenient news-media euphemism; a way of justifying a nearly random and ignorant choice of sources. Why bother researching anything when you can ring up the nearest mosque, temple, scientology depot or church and ask for the nuttiest member of the congregation? The more nutty they are the more likely they are to want to speak out.
This person will usually have no qualification apart from a bigoted loathing of some other so-called ‘community’ and a desire to expose his or her feelings to the nation. This person has been chosen to produce the most controversial sound bites. His words are guaranteed to catalyse fear because we are told that he represents a “community”. In our minds we picture a desperate band of similarly angry individuals, all hell-bent on OUR destruction.
And what of these alleged communities that the leaders allegedly lead? Do they represent thousands, hundreds or perhaps the only their extended family. No Muslim I know had even heard of Omar Bakri until his recent outbursts, and yet he was held to be a Muslim community leader. The phrase “Muslim Community” is of course an absurd simplification – do all Muslims know each other? Do they all even share the same values? Have they all agreed to be lead by the same organisation?
Clearly not all “Community Leaders” are as pathologically dangerous as Mr Bakri, but many of the people who allegedly represent minorities are exceptional cranks. They represent aberrations of their so-called communities. Would we call David Icke a British Community leader? Perhaps the BBC would care to nominate Gene Ray as a spokesman for American science?
A quick search of the BBC News Archive show that community leaders are far more frequently quoted than “insider sources“, but have a very long way to go before they eclipse that mainstay of communication, “The spokesperson“
