Bash Muslims. Bash Anti-Zionists. Get Promoted
Trevor Phillips's entire media career, and political connections, are an urgent reminder of why Britain needs an alternative to its current mainstream media and why we just started Zeteo UK.
Note from our Editor-in-Chief:
Thank you for being a Zeteo UK subscriber! Every now and then, we might share articles first published by Zeteo that might also interest Zeteo UK subscribers, like the piece below from Zeteo’s media columnist, Justin Baragona, on CBS News’s Bari Weiss hiring Sky News’s Trevor Phillips as a senior global affairs correspondent. Justin dives into Phillips’s long history of anti-Muslim remarks here in the UK and has exclusive details on how staffers are reacting to this hugely controversial hire.
And if you’re not already, please do become a paid subscriber today so you can avoid our paywalls and help fund independent journalism in the UK! - Mehdi
“No, don’t try that one on me!” Sky News presenter Trevor Phillips dismissively sneered at UK Green Party leader Zack Polanski last month during an extremely contentious interview.
That contemptuous response came after Polanski, the only Jewish party leader in the UK, as well as the only leader who is outspoken against the genocide in Gaza, wondered why his “Jewish identity [was] being erased from this conversation” as Phillips continuously twisted the left-wing politician’s previous remarks about the threat of antisemitism in the UK.
Polanski noted that many Jews – such as himself – do not feel that pro-Palestinian rallies should be perceived as unsafe hate marches, while acknowledging that attacks on Jewish sites and people in Britain are on the rise. But Phillips chose to ignore and even belittle Polanski’s personal experiences and feelings on the matter. Even when the progressive leader brought up his own recent brushes with antisemitism.
Five weeks after Phillips “monstered” Polanski on air, as Zeteo’s own Owen Jones observed in a recent column in The Guardian, CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss announced that the longtime British broadcaster and political figure had been hired as her network’s senior global affairs correspondent.
“Trevor Phillips cuts through the noise. His decades-long career is a masterclass in seeing beyond groupthink and pursuing the truth,” Weiss said in a statement about his hiring, noting that his reporting will appear on all of CBS News’s programming. “Trevor’s deep knowledge of geopolitics and history will be an incredible asset at CBS News, where he’ll quickly become an indispensable voice for audiences across all platforms.”
Of course, with Weiss – a former New York Times opinion columnist and founder of the anti-woke blog The Free Press – seeing herself as a heterodox thought leader, it doesn’t take much digging to see exactly why Phillips appeals to her.
First, Phillips will be reporting out of the network’s London bureau, which has already seen a huge shakeup after Weiss pushed out highly respected bureau chief Claire Day after a freelance cameraman accused Day of running the bureau like a “Hamas cell”. She replaced Day with Shayndi Raice, a former Wall Street Journal editor with no broadcast experience but similar views on Israel and Gaza as the “Zionist fanatic” Weiss.
And while Phillips comes to CBS News following a long and distinguished career in British politics, writing and broadcasting, it is not without a fair bit of controversy. He was a Labour Party politician who served as the chairman of the UK’s Equality and Human Rights Commission (and the Commission for Racial Equality, its predecessor) for nearly a decade, leaving in September 2012.
His management of the EHRC was wracked with turmoil, which saw six of the organisation’s commissioners leave due to this “divisive leadership” that had led to “deep discontentment and dissatisfaction.” It was also during his time in charge of the race commission that Phillips, in 2004, said that the UK should stop supporting multiculturalism and instead “assert a core of Britishness”.
His views on Islam, however, are what have drawn the most notice in recent years.
 | A guest post by
|