By Gabriel Princewill-
Labour MP Diane Abbott’s team have failed to defend the allegation of racist treatment which she claimed to have been subjected to during last weekend’s question time. When The Eye Of Media.Com contacted Abbott’s press office on Monday, the female who answered the phone said she found the question asking why she found her treatment on Question Time racist intimidating.
The young female who answered the phone was a secondary school girl on work experience. She was immediately made aware of the press inquiry nature of the call, but confidently offered to discuss the purpose of the call, but backtracked when she heard the question. She volunteered to provide an email address for their chief press officer, but when I urged her to get somebody to discuss the matter immediately, she passed the phone to her supervisor. Her supervisor was also unable to answer the question, but instead went on a one tracked speech without pause, stating she was listening to the conversation with her teenage work experience colleague. She said I should have accepted the girl’s suggestion for us to send a mail to their press officer, Rachael Earnington.
At one point, I tried to interject to explain why I needed an on the spot response, but Ayo, as she identified herself, ensured she spoke over me until she very rudely dropped the phone on me. I called back immediately to confirm she deliberately dropped the phone on me, but she foolishly dropped the phone again. Blissfully oblivious of the fact she has been posted to represent Abbott, she allowed her anger take over. Her professional credibility took an immediate knock, and she won’t hear the end of this. It was a school girl error that won’t go away as quickly as she may have imprudently thought at the time.
Her lack of foresight has led to a wider plan for our team to examine the quality of Abbott’s press team, as part of a wider evaluation and insight into the Labour MP’s set up. However, it will all be done very professionally. A background to explain the reason for attempting to secure an immediate discussion, or at least, one later that day puts things into accurate perspective.
Abbott’s press officer had been contacted last week, before Question Time’s programme was aired, in relation to a separate investigation this publication is conducting. The investigation pertained to an inquiry into why some sections of the press focused on Abbott’s use of the N’ word on air in September 2017, when recounting on ITV’s Good Morning programme her experience of racism on twitter. That investigation arose when in December 2018, Ms Abbott condemned Twitter over racist and misogynistic tweets appearing on its platform. Her rebuke came after Amnesty International described twitter as a “toxic place” for women, in light of years of abuse, threats and harassment on the social media platform.
TARGET
The report into harassment against women on Twitter found that women of colour were 34 per cent more likely to be targets of hate speech than white women. It concluded that black women specifically were 84 per cent more likely to be mentioned in abusive tweets. It was disappointing to see that a number of the press focused their article on Abbott’s use of the ‘N’ word, instead of taking an assertive position against the internet bullies subjecting the Mp to a vile level of racism. At the end of December, we decided to probe the matter further, but agreed to consult with our thinktank in January over a few meetings about the highly sensitive issue.
We decided to contact the relevant press organisations to probe the underlying reasons or motive for the weak or compromised level of journalism in reporting that particular incident. The phone call to Abbott’s office was aimed at carefully and sensitively assessing Abbott’s claims and feelings, but her representatives blew it! It wasn’t so bad that they had not anticipated the possibility of a call coming through on the matter, but what was worse was their failure to handle the challenge they felt maturely and professionally.
An official complaint has been sent to Abbott’s office about the incident, and will require a response. We want to know what sort of training these individuals posted in Abbott’s press office have in dealing with the press, and what makes them think they can behave as they please. We will also separately be examining the full episode of Question Time complained about and delivering a dispassionate assessment on Abbott’s complaint. We will use professionals from a cross section of backgrounds on our thinktank to look into it and see what we make of the complaint. There is a lot more to come on this.