Media Hatred of City Bankers Reaches New Heights

Two British newspapers have reported the same story under similar misleading ‘banker-bashing’ headlines.

 “Jilted City banker ‘bought crossbows and gun and disguised himself as a doctor to launch deadly attack on lover who spurned him" said the headline in The Daily Mail.

“Spurned City banker bought cache of weapons and set fire to home of ex girlfriend's parents, court hears” claimed The Mirror.

Both stories told how ‘a city banker spurned by a doctor he met through a dating agency bought a cache of weapons including crossbows and a gun’ [it was an air rifle] ‘and set fire to her parents’ home after they uncovered his criminal past.’

Al Amin Dhalla, a Canadian national, allegedly orchestrated a terrifying four-month campaign against trainee doctor Alison Hewitt, 35, from Brighton, East Sussex, and her family when she dumped him in December 2010.

He was eventually arrested by armed officers at the hospital where she worked - but only after a police helicopter airlifted her parents to safety from the secluded holiday home he had tracked them down to and set alight, Lewes Crown Court heard. He also tried to set fire to a police station.

However, later in the same story in the Mail it is revealed that Dhalla worked for MDBA, the missile defence system manufacturer until his recent ‘retirement’. This fact emerged in the case because, it is alleged, Dhalla also sent malicious letters to MDBA executives, including the managing director, and was investigated by Special Branch for doing so. This happened after he told his employers about his relationship with the woman in question, “a requirement of his official security clearance at MDBA”.

So, why is Al Amin Dhalla described in the headlines in the Dail Mirror and the Daily Mail as a, “Jilted City banker” and a “Spurned City banker”, when in fact he worked for a missile defence manufacturer?

The slim justification is that in 2009, when Dhalla first arrived in London from his native Canada he worked as a “a bank auditor in London”. This clarification the Mail sees fit to convey in paragraph nineteen of their story and the Mirror, despite referring to Dhalla as “a banker” in the first line of the story (and a “City banker” in the headline) omits to mention this in their story at all – just as they omit to mention that at the time of the crime he was in fact working for a defence contractor, and not as both papers boldly state in their headlines, ‘in the City’.

Is the real reason perhaps because ‘Defence Contractor Goes Nuts and Threatens Everybody’ just doesn’t have quite the same crowd-pleasing ring as ‘City Banker Goes Mental With Crossbow.'?

Never let the truth get in the way of a good story, eh, boys?