The case, and the numbers that won’t sit still
Abusali Rahman, a supply teacher, was jailed for six years at Bolton Crown Court for upskirting schoolgirls and using AI to “nudify” their social media photos. All four outlets agree on the sentence. They do not agree on much of the arithmetic.
- His age: 37 in The Independent [1], The Mirror [3] and the BBC [4]; 36 in GB News [2].
- Number of victims: 14 girls in GB News [2]; 15 in the other three [1][3][4]. The BBC adds that “Police said 12 had been identified” [4], a detail the others omit.
- Scale of the upskirting: “hundreds of upskirt photos” in GB News’s headline [2], but “more than 100” in its own opening paragraph [2] and in the BBC [4]. The Independent and Mirror cite 226 category C images, some of them upskirt images [1][3].
- The charges: GB News lists “one count of voyeurism” [2]; The Independent says “one count of operating equipment beneath clothing without consent” [1]; the BBC says “one upskirting offence” [4].
None of this is sinister. It looks like ordinary copy drift. But in a case where precision is the only dignity available to victims, a headline that says “hundreds” over a body that says “more than 100” is loose handling (we cannot tell from the sources which figure is right).
Whose explanation gets the space
The defence barrister’s mitigation appears in three reports. The Independent [1], The Mirror [3] and GB News [2] all relay that Rahman “spoke to an Imam” and was advised to marry. The Independent and Mirror also carry the line that “it was through his religious education that led to him studying and becoming a teacher” [1][3]. The BBC reduces the defence to one quote: “He found himself out of control and unable to stop” [4].
This is a framing choice worth naming. Mitigation is part of the court record, and reporting it is defensible. But repeated without comment, it places a religious adviser in the causal story of a crime, and the reports never say what weight, if any, the judge gave it. The Independent and GB News also stress his “dual UK-Bangladeshi” or “Bangladeshi descent” identity [1][2]. The BBC leaves ethnicity out entirely. We cannot say from the text whether this was intended to steer readers, and we flag that as speculation. We can say the detail does no work in explaining how the offences happened, and that it invites readers to supply their own explanation.
GB News is also the only outlet to quote the judge’s remark: “You’ve not given up on yourself and I’m not going to give up on you either” [2]. That is a real and newsworthy sentencing remark, though it sits oddly beside a headline stressing “hundreds” of photos.
“Nudify”: a friendly verb for an abuse
Every outlet repeats “nudify” [1][2][3], or describes “sexualised fake images” [4]. Newspeak works by shrinking the vocabulary of harm. “Nudify” sounds like an app feature, a product verb, in the family of “beautify” or “personalise.” The CPS’s own phrase is “sexualised deepfake images of pupils” [1][2][3], which the outlets do quote, yet the headline word is the softer one. The Independent puts “nudify” in scare quotes [1]; the Mirror does the same [3]. The quotation marks help, but the verb stays in the headline. The legal charge, by contrast, is “making indecent photographs/pseudo photographs of a child” [1]. The law has a plain name; the headline does not use it.
Regulation: the police say one thing, the BBC adds the rest
DC Lisa McGaffin says “there isn’t much legislation around the regulation of AI” [1] and calls for “better regulations around AI technology” [2]. The Independent and GB News print this without any response [1][2]. A reader would reasonably conclude the law has not caught up.
The BBC is the only outlet to test that claim. It carries Ofcom’s statement that it has “investigated more than 100 platforms, including whether X and Telegram are complying” and “issued fines totalling more than £7m against 11 providers” [4]. It also quotes a government spokesman saying it is now illegal “to make or share tools designed to generate AI child abuse” [4], and records the NSPCC calling for stronger action from tech firms, government and Ofcom [4]. Note what is still missing. The offending content was posted on X [1][3][4], and Ofcom says it is investigating whether X complies [4], but no outlet reports whether X’s systems detected the account, which had about 1,000 followers [1][3][4]. It was a parent, not a platform, who found it [1][3][4]. GB News adds that police are “looking into those accounts, but no further arrests have been made” [2], a thread the others drop.
The Huxley angle: three outlets leave the reader with the impression of a diffuse technological tide (“AI has become part of our lives and very fast” [2]), which is soothing in its vagueness. Nobody in particular is responsible for a tide.
Safeguarding, thinly covered
GB News reports police saying there were “no issues with DBS checks” and no student concerns when Rahman had his phone out [2]. The BBC reports he searched for spy cameras and “possible defences for teachers making images of children” [4]. Neither the schools’ supervision nor phone policies are examined in any outlet. That is an omission, though the sources may simply not have contained such information.
What a reader would need instead
- One agreed set of figures, sourced to the court or CPS, with discrepancies (age, 14 versus 15 victims, “hundreds” versus “more than 100”) corrected.
- The legal term for the offences, not the product-style verb.
- Mitigation reported as mitigation, with the judge’s treatment of it, and without ethnic or religious detail that explains nothing.
- Ofcom’s enforcement record and the new government offences alongside any police claim about missing regulation, as the BBC did [4], plus an answer on what X did or did not detect.
- A question to schools about phone use by supply staff, and to the DBS system about what it can and cannot catch.