Reporting crime
| 09:16 UK time, Monday, 28 January 2008
Last week, the director general Mark Thompson gave a speech, which was also published on this blog, in which he had some thoughts about the 91Èȱ¬'s responsibilities towards reporting crime.
"A child murder under any circumstances is a unique and terrible tragedy," he said. "But we shouldn’t allow our coverage of one or even an unconnected series of individual events to give the public impression that these things are an everyday occurrence or that the trend is up when in fact it is down."
He did say that he thought the 91Èȱ¬ was "less guilty of this kind of exaggeration than almost any other part of the British media" but added that being less guilty didn't mean we were always entirely innocent. 
We've been giving his words some thought this week. On Thursday the showed there had been a 9% drop in overall crime in England and Wales, though there had been a 4% rise in gun crime. What should our response to that have been? The story was reported online, and early in the day on other parts of 91Èȱ¬ News, but as the Peter Hain resignation and the SocGen story came along it fell down the running orders. Had the crime figures revealed a 9% rise in crime, would we have allowed it to drop down the agenda so much?
It's clear to me that commercial media has an interest in reporting increasing crime because it knows that it sells. There's no particular obligation on them - or commercial interest - in reporting falling crime. It's not the 91Èȱ¬'s job to play down crime, but it is our duty to report it accurately and where appropriate to act as a corrective to the rest of the media. Often that will mean giving context, as well as reporting specific incidents.
I've written on this blog before about why I think the 91Èȱ¬ coverage of the disappearance of Madeleine McCann was responsible.
Crime that is unusual and extreme will always have news value for audiences. The 91Èȱ¬ is correct to report such crime as part of its broad news service. But we should always make efforts to explain how typical, or otherwise, such crime is. And we should report it in calm terms. We should not be scaring our audiences unnecessarily nor should we ignore and underplay crime that harms many members of our audience.
Comments
"There's no particular obligation on them - or commercial interest - in reporting falling crime."
No interest or obligation - except that they are commercial entities and therefore, unlike the 91Èȱ¬, their survival is directly linked to their ability to report actual news. And not prevent stories from reaching the public.
Surely a ~10% drop in crime is incredible good news?
Whereas politicians being caught up in scandal is now rather par for the course...
The 91Èȱ¬ has a tremendous capacity to present a balanced, measured and unsensationalised news agenda, which in my view should mean encouraging positive news of national importance, as well as the seemingly almost-daily political scandals.
Your competitor ITV News' "And Finally" items are an attempt to lighten the mood with an 'ahh' story(necessary due to their ultra-sensationalism early on). Something so brazen wouldn't ever be needed by the 91Èȱ¬, but positive news stories interspersed with (like you say) more perspective, is surely the way to go.
I am currently looking at the "England" webpage, which includes "More News from around England" in 4 sections . There are 6 headlines in each section , and they fall into the following categories :
6 about murders
3 about sudden/violent deaths
5 about various crimes , including fights
10 about other things , 9 of which are distinctly downbeat covering things such as traffic congestion , job losses and cash shortages .
Why ?
Having looked at the 91Èȱ¬ Office's "Crime in England and Wales:
Quarterly Update to September 2007" and compared it to your news online report of 24th Jan (as linked in the blog) I have to conclude that my overall impression is that its not that bad. The crime figures are difficult to explain, with two data sources and multiple overlapping categories.
Someone must have actually read the report in order to get the firearm offences provisional numbers, but otherwise all the information was in the Government News Network Press Release, apart from the 91Èȱ¬ Secretary's quote.
It is understandable that the statistical significance testing of the British Crime Survey information is unexplained (why BCS crime is "stable"), and I would consider the parts of the report that refer to public concerns about crime to be less important.
The following areas didn't make your news online article --
the increase in recorded drug offences is associated with a change in Police practice (this is also true of the decrease in fraud and forgery recorded offences). Drug offences are the only category of recorded crime to show a rise, and the first one that you report.
Property crime isn't mentioned at all (it accounts for over 70% of recorded offences). Sexual offences are also ignored.
The risk of being a victim of crime (as reported in the BCS) has statistically significantly reduced since last year. (You do report the 91Èȱ¬ Secretary saying it is at its lowest level recorded in the BCS since it began in 1981)
Reporting crime? Hah! We have been the victim of vicious attacks by gangs in our area in recent months.When a neighbour phoned the police to report that she had seen some out of place hoodies sitting in a car obviously casing the street she was told, in a very snotty manner - 'sitting in a car is not illegal, madam' The police refused to investigate - three hours later a woman was attacked, robbed and stabbed by what she described as a gang of hoodies who had been waiting for her in a car on the same street. Nice one, eh? Not the kind of reporting you had in mind, of
course, but apposite nonetheless.
It's difficult to "frame" good news like falling crime, and there seems to be a wariness - not by the 91Èȱ¬ necessarily - of appearing to give any credit to the government.
Sadly the prevalence of scare stories on crime - in the news media and in tv fiction - has created a fear of crime out of proportion with reality. Many say crime is increasing but is no longer being reported because it is too difficult or pointless. However when levels rise due to improved reporting procedures - as with hate crime - or a change in recording methods, it is seized upon as proof of growing lawlessness. How many vulnerable people are effectively prisoners in their own homes because some politicians and journalists have convinced them that crime is worsening rather than improving?
Reporting crime is always going to be problematic in that it is as much as 'turn-off' to some parts of your audience/readership, as it is a 'turn-on' to other parts.
As someone with a background in regional newspapers, I think that those local publications which consistently lead with the more mundane robberies or crimes of violence have probably seen the fastest circulation drops. What does that show ? Perhaps over-reporting crime produces the exact opposite effect in the reader of what it is meant to achieve ...ie apathy.
No-one is denying that the bigger crime stories have to be reported fully and well but a balance needs to be reached.
Speaking of over-reporting and under-reporting news, why is the 91Èȱ¬ yet again burying the ORB Survey of violent deaths in Iraq?
When the survey was first published last year, estimating over a million deaths, the 91Èȱ¬ gave it a paragraph at the bottom of a story on a different topic. It reminded me much of the demolition notice in the Hitch-hikers Guide to the Galaxy which was "on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard'".
The ORB survey has just been updated with 600 additional interviews in rural areas of Iraq and the revised results still estimate just over 1 million violent deaths.
I was hoping that you might give the revised survey a top billing as you did with the much lower estimate provided by the WHO report earlier this month. Sadly that does not seem to be the case, so it seems that the only way any 91Èȱ¬ viewers will learn of the revised ORB survey is to go back down into that disused lavatory again.
Local newspapers always make big news of crime on their front pages to frighten the elderly who mainly read the news in local areas. They put all the petty theives and fights up on the front pages every week.
This definately frightens people and amplifies crime in their scared minds when we all know that if we go to certain places at certain times we are likely to get into a fight or be a victim of crime but if we do not we will not.
Crime and criminal activities are usually confined amoung criminals themselves squabbling with each other.