![[Perry Austin-Clarke]](perry.gif)
Perry Austin-Clarke was offering no apologies for the T&A coverage of the bonfire night events in Manningham, despite the false information from the police which led to the headline "Mob go on bonfire rampage":
"We'd received enough in terms of eye witness reports and we'd got the evidence of our own eyes to see. You know, everyday events aren't riot police on the streets, whether that's an over reaction or not, they don't turn out for nothing."
And he lay the blame for the errors in his paper at the door of the police:
"We were misled by the police which made us look wrong, to an extent. I think that by the time the final edition came out we were putting a different perspective on it."
Telegraph & Argus editor Perry Austin-Clarke talked to KDIS about his newspapers coverage of the events in Manningham on bonfire night
He admitted that the first-hand evidence gathered by the T&A on that night was limited:
![[Riot cops in Manningham]](riotcop.gif)
"Obviously we weren't at Manningham at the time when these events were happening. As soon as we learnt about them from our calls and contacts we went out there, but of course we weren't able to witness for ourselves exactly what was happening in terms of the incidents that the police reported to us. Now, when we got there there were still obviously police on the streets with riot gear, cars burning and there was still damage around the phone box that had had a gas canister thrown into it, so we were able to get pictures of all those things. But in terms of people milling about, it was only people looking at the aftermath of the disturbances really, than the actual disturbances themselves. They'd passed by by that point."
The early editions drew heavily on the false police press release from Wakefield. But Mr Austin-Clarke insisted that the T&A had still been careful about what they said. The article began "Around 80 Asian youths armed with petrol bombs and fireworks clashed with police...":
"We were very careful in the first edition to make absolutely clear that there were no petrol bombs actually thrown. We were told in the press release, and this is the nub of the issue really, that they had discovered petrol bombs, which is why they sent police out in riot gear. Well, we'd got the evidence with our own eyes of the riot gear, but we hadn't been able to confirm from any eye witnesses that there were petrol bombs thrown. We were very careful in that story, if you read it, that the police reported finding petrol bombs.
"By the time the first edition was printing, it was obviously too late to change it, but by that time we were getting some indication from some of the people that we were speaking to that no-one had actually seen anything as devastating as a petrol bomb being thrown."
But there was still the headline references to "rampaging mobs":
"Well, there were quite a few eye witness accounts of youths running through the streets hurling fireworks. I mean, that undoubtedly happened. The problem with these events is, you get half a dozen people who are over excited, start throwing things around, and then other people gather to see what's going on, then, something makes them run, and it looks as if you have got a rampaging gang of people. And that's what your average man in the street tends to see, and is terrified by. I mean, it's fairly terrifying to look out of your front window and see a mass of people moving, some of them quickly, holding fireworks, some of them being chased by police."
The trouble with this is, there is no such evidence of running youths being "chased by police". Mr Austin-Clarke was particularly critical of the response of the national media, who he thought "over-reacted." He said the response of the national media spooked the police, who then began to play down events.
"The police realised, I think, that they'd over-exaggerated the amount of information they'd put out, particularly when they heard it on the national media.
"I think what had happened was the police went out of their way to redress the balance and they went too far. They'd dug such a big hole for themselves talking about petrol bombs that didn't exist that they then over reacted completely the other way and started saying 'well, nothing really happened at all' which is patently untrue."
But even without that false press release, Perry Austin-Clarke insists his papers coverage wouldn't have been that different. There is undoubtedly now a widespread impression throughout Bradford that there had indeed been a riot that night, but that it has been covered up by the police, who are soft on Asians. But Austin-Clarke rejects any responsibility for this:
"I don't think we created that impression, I think we were careful not to create that impression. I think we portrayed the events as best as we could from the evidence of our own eyes and the eye witness reports that we were able to gather. And, taking a sideways look at what the police were telling us, we couldn't NOT cover what happened there in the way we did because it happened, it was dramatic, there was a lot of damage caused, there were a lot of concerned readers.
"What subsequently happened was that a lot of people have tried very hard to play it down, to smooth it over and to make it look like it was less significant than it was and the police have actually over reacted to their own mistake."
So what does he believe actually happened that night? Clearly he thinks the seperate incidents are linked:
"I don't believe it was an organised mob. It appears to have been a group of excitable young people who went further than they should have done in terms of how they responded to what was going on around them. I think there was a small nucleus of people who wanted to cause trouble for the hell of it, and committed a number of serious criminal offences. I think burning out cars and throwing a lighted gas canister into a phone box is deliberate vandalism, it's deliberate criminal damage."
Whatever the truth, it doesn't amount to a riot. But Perry Austin-Clarke says that there have been few complaints of his newspaper's coverage.
"I haven't talked to a single Asian whose said "You got it wrong, you shouldn't have done it like this." They accept that, to a large extent, we were responding to what the police were telling us. But that once we'd got beyond that, we handled it very sensitively."