Dan Wootton: Why is the mainstream media so reluctant to cover the scourge of terrorism putting all our lives at risk?

Why is the mainstream media so reluctant to cover the scourge of terrorism putting all our lives at risk?

Yesterday at 10.59am a car bomb exploded at the UK’s largest maternity hospital in Liverpool.

This could have been an incredibly deadly incident.

If it wasn’t for the swift actions of one brave taxi driver – a great Briton and absolute hero called Dave Perry who was driving the cab carrying the suspected suicide bomber, who perished in the incident and has tonight been named as as 32-year-old Emad Al Swealmeen – it’s possible hundreds of lives may have been lost.

At 5pm – six hours after the terrorist attack – the Prime Minister Boris Johnson gathered at Downing Street for a post-Cop26 press conference in front of Westminster’s “accredited journalists”, as Jacinda Ardern likes to call them.

Unbelievably, there was not one question about the Liverpool car bomb.

It’s astonishing to me that virtually every journalist asked the PM a supplementary gotcha question about “Tory sleaze” for the second week, rather than quizzing him about an actual car bomb at the Liverpool Women’s Hospital that same day.

A shocking misjudgement that I think is indicative of the media’s reluctance to cover the very real jihadi threat to innocent Brits on a daily basis.

We saw after the shocking terror attack that killed the MP David Amess last month that the media and the political establishment would rather talk about anything else than ask the hard questions about the homegrown threat of Islamic extremism.

So we saw endless discussions about the online safety bill, general civility in society and the way we treat our MPs – all of which were completely irrelevant.

These IS-inspired terrorists are the sorts of monsters who targeted Manchester children attending an Ariana Grande concert.

They have no humanity. And we must not rest while they continue to operate on our shores.

The media must ask the difficult questions.

How are they being radicalised? Who is behind the radicalisation? Why isn’t the Prevent programme working? Does it need more funding?

Instead, the response we saw today from Labour’s shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth who offered his sympathies to the family of the dead suspected terrorist, rather than discussing how they were allowed to nearly blow up a hospital.

This afternoon the UK’s terror threat level was raised from substantial to severe, meaning another attack is now “highly likely”.

But shamefully, the total silence from our broadcasters continued at a 3pm press conference hosted by the Prime Minister to talk about booster jabs.

Yes, there is a police investigation ongoing and four people have been arrested so we all must be careful as much remains unknown.

But what is blindingly obvious is that hundreds of mothers and babies could have been killed if that car bomb had been successful.

Or perhaps hundreds of folk marking Remembrance Sunday at the cathedral down the road.

We had a lucky escape yesterday.

We won’t keep having lucky escapes.

It’s the responsibility of the media to continually pressure our politicians to ensure they don’t forget about the clear and present danger Islamic extremist terrorism poses to the UK, no matter how politically incorrect such conversations might be.

We cannot look away any longer.