Say What?

When Britain's Channel 4 broadcast a documentary showing preachers in Birmingham's Green Lane Mosque calling for homosexuals to be thrown off mountains and praising Osama Bin Laden, Anil Patani, assistant chief constable of the West Midlands Police, leapt into action. He called for prosecutors to charge the broadcasters with inciting racial hatred. He also accused the channel of splicing together parts of longer speeches to distort what the preachers were saying. Investigations showed that claim to be false. The station asked for an apology and got none. So it sued for libel. The police force recently settled that suit for £100,000.