Police drop case against BBC promotion of racism, misogyny and anti-social behaviour

As May ushered in, news that the year long police investigation into the BBC’s broadcast and promotion of anti-African, anti-social and misogynistic material was to end without resolution after the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) claimed that they were unable to proceed due to a ‘lack of evidence’.

The CPS dropped the case after the BBC failed to provide recordings of the Tim Westwood Radio One show which was the subject of complaint, claiming that they only kept recordings of this type of programme for ‘short periods’, hence the requested evidence was unavailable.

The investigation had already been significantly delayed as the complaint that initiated it met with resistance from the police when Toyin Agbetu from the Ligali organisation initially lodged the complaint at Hackney police station in March 2006. The on-duty officers at the time refused to record the grievance and dismissed the notion of the BBC’s promotion of the n-word, violence and misogyny on the Tim Westwood show as a worthy example of criminal behaviour. They even went as far as defending the use of the n word.

When the complaint was finally recorded, it lagged for 7 months with the police failing to keep Ligali informed of the status of the investigation. A formal complaint to the IPCC regarding the police handling of the complaint resulted in the case been restarted with renewed vigour in December 2006.

Reporting the BBC to the police followed numerous attempts by many African people to bring the BBC to task over the liberal approach to anti-African media content via the now defunct ITC and then Ofcom which had consistently failed.