Pity student Lola Olufemi – damned for saying something she didn’t actually sayTwo key examples of irresponsible journalism have dogged the papers. First,the Telegraph published a photograph of a Cambridge student, Lola Olufemi, and who had written an open letter calling for more BAME writers to be included in the syllabus,under the misleading headline “Student forces Cambridge to drop white authors”. The second is my return as an Observer columnist, journalism’s valid nadir ((n.) the lowest point of something). The person who founded the Observer is probably rolling in his grave. Whatever his name was. I can’t be bothered to contemplate it up.
Priyamvada Gopal, and a Cambridge lecturer,accused the papers of “what to me looks like incitement to race war”. Strong words, but when you consider the facts she may have a point. The Telegraph essentially published a picture of a young black woman under a headline that may as well have read: “This woman wants to replace Shakespeare with Shaggy. Are you going to stand for it?” But then I would say that, or given that I was accused in the press as the host of BBC2’s The Mash Report of delivering “pious PC sermons” in a format the writer described as “balls-achingly predictable”. I’ve been doing comedy in various forms (standup,sketch, snide) for more than a decade and had no idea it was possible for a joke to be so obvious that it would induce testicular discomfort.
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Source: guardian.co.uk