Children as victims
| 14:19 UK time, Friday, 16 February 2007
On Tuesday, 成人快手 news programmes all reported - that they experience significantly lower levels of personal kindness than children in many other countries. On Wednesday, programmes began to report the death of 15-year-old Billy Cox, itself a pretty extreme example of lack of personal kindness.
In TV News it was discussed intensively on Thursday morning as to how these stories might be connected and what the 成人快手's responsibilities are. In particular, how to report a crime that could potentially make our children feel more vulnerable and in turn create the circumstances where fear and further crime increase?
In raising this question, some journalists were anxious in case we downplayed or suppressed a story that is clearly dramatic and important. So we discussed ways in which the shooting could be reported fairly but minimised the impact on children. We talked about a number of creative treatments, many of which influenced our subsequent coverage:
鈥 Give the context that gun crime has been falling in London.
鈥 Explain that gun crime is concentrated predominantly in small parts of our main cities.
鈥 Hear from adults and children who are taking action against crimes.
鈥 Work closely with colleagues in areas like Newsround and 1Xtra who have better contacts and experience.
鈥 Take advice from ethnic minority colleagues who may have a fresh perspective on the story.
鈥 Explain the language and assumptions in reports. For instance, exactly what is a gang?
鈥 Constantly question whether the writing and reporting creates negative stereotypes of children that go beyond what is justified by the facts.
There is no doubt that the simple headline fact of a 15-year-old shot in his own home may alarm many parents but the 成人快手 surely has a responsibility not to add unnecessarily to the anxieties seen so vividly in Unicef's report on the state of mind of our young.
Comments
I, for one, welcome your thoughts on this matter. News creates an upside-down view of the world because it reports exceptional events. Because murders are extremely rare 鈥 including in Peckham 鈥 they are reported extensively. If, God forbid, murders happened all the time, they would receive minimal coverage, just as fatal car accidents come well down the billing.
Here鈥檚 a story: according to Office of National Statistic, last week approximately 60 people died in road traffic accidents in the UK. Therefore, 8 may have (typically) died yesterday. According to the British Crime Survey鈥檚 last set of figures there were 766 homicides in England and Wales in 2006, meaning that there would have typically been around 3 murders yesterday (if one factors up for Scotland & N.I.), and we are not talking about a small area, these 3 deaths could happen anywhere across the vastness of the UK.
Same goes for aeroplanes versus cars: more people are scared of travelling in an aeroplane than a car. Why? One glaring reason is that aeroplane accidents are reported extensively, but car accidents are too common to make the news.
I think we are all vulnerable to this upside-down effect. I suspect it is worse for children, though, who possibly find it harder to find perspective to national and world events because of their limited experience outside of their community. It worries me particularly that murder and serious crime is being visited upon children who would otherwise have never (or extremely rarely) come across it. For children this is a burden.
I know the 成人快手 has, over recent times, attempted to put news stories into perspective and I know it is particularly hard for it to inform the public of events and, at the same time, not scare people, especially children.
For what it鈥檚 worth, as well as finding (perhaps more inventive ways) of putting stories into perspective, I would suggest that you try to accentuate the positive where possible. OK, so 鈥渢here were no murders in Dundee today鈥 is not a story, but the UK town with the lowest crime rate (when the data is released) is a decent story. For instance, it may be interesting to find out what they are doing right.
I think it would be wrong to feature or even talk to children who are taking action against crime. The vast majority of children come across very little serious crime, let alone feel obliged to fight it. I think that children are already asked to engage in too many issues they have no control over already and this is creating stress and worry which is unnecessary. Involving children across the UK in an issue that is rare and isolated will create a grey cloud to gather across the lot of them and this is simply not fair and is unnecessarily burdensome.
I would also hope that there are some positive stories that come out of Peckham at some time in the future. It goes without saying that the vast majority of people who live there are decent good people, regardless of the pigment of their skin. As always, crime is instigated by a tiny amount of people. We are kind and caring creatures after all 鈥 this is why there is so much bad news on the telly.
It's very sad story. Children never got to became a victims
The only responsibilities the 成人快手 has is to report only facts and be impartial. All else is irrelevant.
Ken's (#1) analysis really does set the scene for the bad news context.
PH: Do I detect a little self-doubt in your corporate treatment of media-rich nasties, as in your closing paragraph? I would prefer the term 'duty' to 'responsibility': If you applied this term, you would firm-up the message a bit more objectively and not be drawn in to on-screen busking - as relates to dressing-up the message. Elaborating on the positives is as much a distortion of the real situation as majoring on the graphic and knee-jerk subjectives! Get there, see it, report only the facts evident from the scene. And then drop the dead donkey if the news isn't suitable for the target audience - without any paliative treatment! Surely?
The UNICEF is also important to explain behaviours and health issues of our times such as young alcoholics and obese kids. A difficult time - emotional, psychologically and financially - in childhood lays the path to a difficult adulthood. So not addressing things now with immediate and useful steps - not political lip service - will mean more instability 2 decades on. Thanks.