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Spookdaddy Cuckoo Joined: 24 May 2006 Total posts: 3923 Location: Midwich Gender: Unknown |
 Posted: 09-04-2013 16:44 Post subject: |
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| escargot1 wrote: | | His point was that people expect a mixture of stories, as if that's how 'news' really happens, whereas what is presented to us as 'news' is indeed sifted and carefully chosen before it ever reaches us... |
I get that each individual agency does this, and does so with an eye on what every other agency is doing also - and I get the point Carlos is making, too - I just find it hard to believe that anyone in the business of selling the news will sit on a story (at least for any length of time) if it pushes all the right buttons, or even that it's that controllable, especially in the internet age.
I mean, yes, there are plenty of murders which take place in mundane and depressingly familiar circumstances which hardly break the surface - however slow a news day it is - precisely because they are mundane and depressingly familiar. But can anyone think of a headline worthy murder that didn't eventually make the headlines? (And I mean headline worthy in the sense of sensational; you'd assume that most murders are headline worthy to those affected). That's not a rhetorical question, by the way - I am actually quite interested in this now. I'm also aware that there's a potential contradiction going on there (ie does anyone know about something we weren't told about) but I'm writing it on the assumption that all such stories enter the public domain somehow.
On a positive note regarding this subject: I read a review of a book not long ago which suggested that the modern fascination for murder is in inverse proportion - historically speaking - to the likelihood of us being murdered: that is - we're now fascinated by murder because it's a lot rarer than it used to be. I suspect that this is somewhat dependant on where you live and also, being a historical overview, won't always reflect the more immediate realities of spikes in the trend. However, above and beyond the fairly self-evident truth that you are highly unlikely to be murdered, it appears that, statistically speaking, someone in the UK, Europe or the US is actually much less likely to be murdered than many of those who trod the same streets in the past. I can't remember the name of the book - but it'll come to me; there were some pretty shocking statistics regarding medieval Oxford - Morse would have been run off his feet. |
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| Spookdaddy Cuckoo Joined: 24 May 2006 Total posts: 3923 Location: Midwich Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 09-04-2013 16:54 Post subject: |
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Here we go:
| Quote: | | Take homicide. Using old court and county records in England, scholars calculate that rates have plummeted by a factor of 10, 50 and, in some cases, 100—for example, from 110 homicides per 100,000 people per year in 14th-century Oxford... |
(Lewis......LEWIS!!!)
| Quote: | | ...to fewer than one homicide per 100,000 in mid-20th-century London. Similar patterns have been documented in Italy, Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Scandinavia. The longer-term trend is even more dramatic, Pinker told me in an interview: “Violent deaths of all kinds have declined, from around 500 per 100,000 people per year in prestate societies to around 50 in the Middle Ages, to around six to eight today worldwide, and fewer than one in most of Europe.” What about gun-toting Americans and our inordinate rate of homicides (currently around five per 100,000 per year) compared with other Western democracies? In 2005, Pinker computes, just eight tenths of 1 percent of all Americans died of domestic homicides and in two foreign wars combined. |
From Michael Shermer's review of Steven Pinker's, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined - in Scientific American. (Here.) |
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| Quake42 Warrior Princess
Great Old One Joined: 25 Feb 2004 Total posts: 5310 Location: Over Silbury Hill, through the Solar field Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 09-04-2013 17:02 Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | I mean, yes, there are plenty of murders which take place in mundane and depressingly familiar circumstances which hardly break the surface - however slow a news day it is - precisely because they are mundane and depressingly familiar. But can anyone think of a headline worthy murder that didn't eventually make the headlines? (And I mean headline worthy in the sense of sensational; you'd assume that most murders are headline worthy to those affected). |
If by "headline" murders we mean, as suggested earlier in the thread. those involving one or more of the following:
* Two or more deaths of involving victims who are unrelated to the suspected perpetrator
* A stranger killing of a very young or very elderly victim
* An attractive, young and most likely middle class female victim
then no. However it is surprising how many child murders, for example, do not receive national attention: typically when the victim is male and/or in their teens and/or has a troubled background of some sort.
The media has a clear vision of the type of murders that interest readers/viewers and very often fails to cover those that fall outside of the categories above. I don't however, believe this qualifies as a conspiracy.
| Quote: | | So a load of unrelated murder stories might, instead of being scarily titillating, come across as a sign of a complete social breakdown. No newspaper would take that risk |
I'm not sure I buy that. I remember quite a lot of media fuss a few years ago following a number of unrelated murders which took place in (I think) Glasgow over a bank holiday weekend. |
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| ChrisBoardman Great Old One Joined: 17 May 2011 Total posts: 539 Location: Alton, Hampshire Gender: Male |
| Posted: 09-04-2013 17:15 Post subject: |
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What I hate is when a front page newspaper article starts... "Mr Bloggs cut off his wife's head and buried her in the garden" and then it says "a court heard".
So it's basically an accusation not a fact. |
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| Spudrick68 Great Old One Joined: 08 Jun 2008 Total posts: 1110 Location: sunny Morecambe Age: 45 Gender: Male |
| Posted: 09-04-2013 21:52 Post subject: |
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| "His wife was a pretty blonde" 'cos that's dead relevant. |
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| smokehead Great Old One Joined: 28 Mar 2010 Total posts: 262 Location: West Midlands. Age: 52 Gender: Male |
| Posted: 10-04-2013 09:42 Post subject: |
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If anybody watches BBC news 24, if I say phone hacking, perhaps like me,people will think of poor Milly Dowler ironing.
BBC reporter Tim Howard was told off by a member of the search teams in Maccynleth looking for April Jones after he tried yet again to get someone to say that she was most likely dead.
I noticed ages ago that only certain murders made the national news, because I used to read the news by region on teletext (insomnia makes you do the oddest things)
I'm not prepared to concede yet the possibility of a moral panic, but I do agree that news is tailored to a criteria of public interest and most likely ratings potential.
If you hear on the news a teenager has been stabbed in the London area,what colour do you think they are? I'm not being racist,quite the opposite, and asking the question again,why this murder and not that one?
I'm prepared to believe Ken Clarke stumbled over his words when he suggested some rapes are less serious than others, from the point of view of the victim every murder is serious! |
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| escargot1 Joined: 24 Aug 2001 Total posts: 17895 Location: Farkham Hall Age: 4 Gender: Female |
| Posted: 10-04-2013 11:00 Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | why this murder and not that one? |
Depends. For one thing, certain murders are more important because certain people are more important. Some murder victims appear more newsworthy than others, because they're white, female, young, rich, 'respectable' or just pretty.
(I could go on but we've covered all this many times, for example in the Madeleine McCann thread.)
Other victims have different attributes. They're non-white, poor, sex workers, male, physically unprepossessing, elderly, whatever - and whether or not their murders are seen in the national news depends on other criteria such as the method of the killing (stabbing, shooting, devil dogs) or the notoriety of the killer (serial killers, drive-by shooters).
If the victim isn't worth working up a story about the media look at the killer and the method, and if they're mundane - drunks fighting or 'domestics', say - it's a non-runner, at least in national media terms.
(Unless it can be linked to other similar crimes, in which a lucrative moral panic can be created.)
As an example, Harold Shipman was interesting to the national media only because he killed so many people. If he'd murdered only a few elderly widows he wouldn't have made the national news for so long. Even now, if his name comes up it's in the context of 'Britain's Most Prolific Serial Killer', rather than as the murderer of people's mothers and grans.
Bet you wish you hadn't asked!  |
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| liveinabin1 Great Old One Joined: 19 Oct 2001 Total posts: 2138 Location: insert witty comment here Gender: Female |
| Posted: 10-04-2013 22:56 Post subject: |
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I think I have mentioned it here before but I read a while ago about a young boy who went missing a year to the day after Madeline McCann.
He was about the same age and went missing from his home street. Never seen or heard from again. I have never heard the case reported but then the boy was from a poor area, and most likely just not as interesting a story as a missing middle class girl. I think I heard the programme that 'Scarg referred to and they said that missing children only hit the headlines when they are photogenic, white and middle class.
I live in Ipswich and I remember the reports of the first women who were missing that ended up being found murdered. There was little national media attention until it proved there was a serial killer on the loose.
EDIT: here is a link to the case of missing boy Daniel Entwistle that I mentioned above. link
long url tidied up - stu |
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| smokehead Great Old One Joined: 28 Mar 2010 Total posts: 262 Location: West Midlands. Age: 52 Gender: Male |
| Posted: 11-04-2013 15:02 Post subject: |
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I'm always glad I asked, I believe in many voices ,many answers, being suspicious of absolute certainties and the people who maintain them.
There is a grey area even in the death of a human being at the hands of another, war,self defence,accidental death, and imho,where persistent abuse can be proved,any woman who sticks a carving knife somehwere where their abuser would'nt like it up 'em should be cheerfully sent on their way to freedom by a judge.
Thanks to Liveinabin for providing a clear, albeit sombre example of what is being discussed. |
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| Spookdaddy Cuckoo Joined: 24 May 2006 Total posts: 3923 Location: Midwich Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 11-04-2013 16:52 Post subject: |
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| liveinabin1 wrote: | I think I have mentioned it here before but I read a while ago about a young boy who went missing a year to the day after Madeline McCann.
He was about the same age and went missing from his home street. Never seen or heard from again. I have never heard the case reported but then the boy was from a poor area, and most likely just not as interesting a story as a missing middle class girl. I think I heard the programme that 'Scarg referred to and they said that missing children only hit the headlines when they are photogenic, white and middle class... |
Without wishing to deny that there may be some truth in the conclusion, I have to say that I'm not sure that the basic premise of this example is entirely accurate.
The case was reported in the national papers at the time, and has been resuscitated occasionally since. For example: Guardian report here, Sun report here, Telegraph here, Mail here. (There are some anomalies in the article dating, as there often are, but it's clear when you read them that all the reports are contemporary with the incident.)
It's certainly had absolutely nothing like the ongoing coverage that the Madeleine McCann enquiry has - but it seems to me that the latter case is an exception (by a very long margin), rather than the rule, and that therefore you have to be careful when drawing comparisons. I'd go as far as to say that coverage of the McCann case is so outside the norm that any comparison with another case is always going to say more about the former than the latter and therefore not much use if you are trying to establish what any norm might be.
(I suspect that there are a couple of main reasons as to why the national coverage has been cooler over Daniel Entwistle's disappearance: one - the main one - being that the parents aren't as media savvy as the McCanns; the second, that the authorities have always had a strong suspicion that the missing boy drowned.) |
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| liveinabin1 Great Old One Joined: 19 Oct 2001 Total posts: 2138 Location: insert witty comment here Gender: Female |
| Posted: 11-04-2013 17:30 Post subject: |
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You are right Spook, we cannot draw conclusions from just two cases. But just speaking for me personally I can name, without thinking too hard, 4 girls that have gone missing and there has been large amounts of media coverage, but only one boy.
Now it may be that more girls go missing, but I do think there is a media bias towards photogenic white girls. |
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| smokehead Great Old One Joined: 28 Mar 2010 Total posts: 262 Location: West Midlands. Age: 52 Gender: Male |
| Posted: 12-04-2013 11:15 Post subject: |
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Missing white woman syndrome on wiki is worth a read and is relevant to this discussion.
I think an important angle in the Madeliene McCann case was the parents going to dinner, inviting righteous fury of the 'what sort of parent leaves their kids alone while they have dinner?' etc.
In that case,checking on the kids every 15 minutes is a Goldilocks time, every 5 minutes seems unbelievable,and every half hour seems too long,whereas every 15 minutes sounds about right.
My own worthless theory is that they simply overmedicated Madeliene,to get her to sleep,or she had some sort of reaction to it,and the rest is a cover up.
I think there does have to be an angle, the news will get on your last nerve about it, BBC news being particularly prone to recycling the same news over and over, one example being the day it seemed to consist of the Philpotts crying and the battered face of assaulted pensioner Emma Winfield coming up every 5 minutes. |
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| ChrisBoardman Great Old One Joined: 17 May 2011 Total posts: 539 Location: Alton, Hampshire Gender: Male |
| Posted: 12-04-2013 14:07 Post subject: |
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I think the reason that some cases make the news more is because someone is missing rather than found murdered.
Cases like Maddie, Sarah Payne and Holly and Jessica..... at first they were officially missing. So while there is still hope, the police ask for the nations help. |
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| smokehead Great Old One Joined: 28 Mar 2010 Total posts: 262 Location: West Midlands. Age: 52 Gender: Male |
| Posted: 15-04-2013 10:58 Post subject: |
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It's common enough for dogs to unearth bodies that have been hidden, and I know the police use anniversaries to publicise an unsolved case again in the hope of jogging someones memory.
Michael Bilton's book on the Yorkshire ripper investigation,Evil Beyond Belief is a good example of a major investigation in the days before computers and DNA samples.
Watching the telly makes people think murders are solved by two detectives, we know the reality is very different,and the sheer amount of paperwork generated in the ripper case was staggering.
In April Jones case, the reason the police were reluctant to involve the help of the locals in search teams is because there was a risk that potentially vital forensic evidence could be destroyed.
Forensic officers will crawl across a site doing a fingertip search for evidence,
well meaning looky loo's could easily tread something in or carry something away with them that could be vital.
Then of course,there are those phone calls by aggrieved people,alleging their partner is the murderer..............  |
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| cherrybomb Skating the thin crust
Great Old One Joined: 26 Aug 2009 Total posts: 1005 Location: Sitting on the roof at dusk Gender: Female |
| Posted: 15-04-2013 14:01 Post subject: |
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I find that when there's a panto style "baddie" for everyone to BooHissBoo at, then the news goes nuts too. For example, poor Joanna Yeates, killed in her own home, they trot the odd ball land lord, Chris Jefferies out & the amount of people I heard at the time betting that it was him. The media seem to need the pretty white princess as well as the big bad man (guilty or not) in their stories 
Or is it just me?? |
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