HOW UK MEDIA DEMONISED ASIAN MEN AS SEX PREDATORS

The far-right billionaire owner of Tesla and X, Elon Musk, in recent weeks, has used his social media platform X to attack and spread misinformation demonising South Asians and Muslims in the UK over a decade-old child sex abuse scandal. However, the demonisation of both groups over the so-called Grooming Gang Scandal predates Musk's recent ramblings on X. In this clip, UK rapper and activist Lowkey (@lowkeyonline) gives a striking example of how the British media has been fanning the flames of racism that have been engulfing the country lately.

When a report by the Quilliam Foundation concluded that so-called 'grooming gangs' - which prey on often underage girls to sexually abuse them - consisted, in the UK, predominantly (84%) of Asian men, the media ran wild with the story, plastering their front pages with headlines that painted immigrants as sex pests.

Yet the study had serious methodological flaws - so bad that Lowkey calls them criminal. First and foremost, the sample size was tiny (a hundred or so cases) compared with the vast number of sex crimes committed in the UK - so no general conclusions could confidently be inferred from it.

The Crime Survey for England and Wales reported that an estimated 1.1 million adults (798,000 women and 275,000 men) aged 16 years and over were victims of sexual assault (including attempts) in the year ending March 2022. Around 227,500 identifiable child abuse offences were recorded by the police in the year ending March 2019.

Of course, when the flawed nature of the study was finally realised, the media did little to disabuse the public. Why do you think that was?