To think not all crimes need to be in/on the news

[MissBax]

Just watched the gang related moped attacks that have gone on in the capital over the last 24 hours.
Sometimes I worry that the reporting of these things might give other wrong'ens ideas? There are also times I wonder why details need to be divulged about horrendously cruel crimes such as rape / animal abuse etc. It doesn't seem necessary to go into the details and I feel like divulging this information could do more harm than good.
I appreciate the importance of public concerns, politics, economics etc. But the other things seem unnecessary. Am I wrong?

YANBU. The constant reporting on acid attacks a while back surely must have given some people ideas.

I'm not sure your average moped thief tunes in for the news.

Although, I have felt the same about reports on foiled terrorist activities in the past.

AIBU To think not all crimes need to be in/on the news

They're not. A very, tiny, small amount are.

Although I do think that the reporting of some crimes, such as the aforementioned acid attacks were irresponsible, especially when I saw a reporter in a local shop, showing all the different kind of every day products that could be bought that would cause similar effects. I don't know what the hell they were thinking with that one.

MissionItsPossible
You're right. It was my bad grammar - I realise not all crimes are reported, I meant more of the ones that are, many are unnecessary.
Definitely agree regarding the acid attacks and also foiled terrorist attacks - they basically tell people what to avoid or do differently next time. It's utterly bizarre.

Some stories are more 'newsworthy'.

I agree and then shows like emmerdale use acid attacks as a storyline

Child crimes are reported:
a child goes missing/search/found/inquest/trial/sentencing/appeal/ social workers/inquest/report. Each of these is important but also builds up to an idea of lots of crime when it's the same thing being reported at different stages.

This happens for many crimes in the media.

It distorts the underreported "unimportant " crimes and accentuates individual crimes that create state of fear.

An example is that your child is more likely to be injured/assaulted/raped/murdered by someone in your family than a stranger.

I've only just noticed that the term "moped" is in common use in the UK to describe something that isn't a moped.

YABU for not referring to them as scooters. If it doesn't have pedals, like a bicycle, it's not a moped.

(To be fair, google tells me that the definition of "moped" was changed in UK law to include non-mopeds, so it's partly the governments fault everyone in Britain is using the wrong word.)

I work in criminal justice, offenders don't pick up ideas from the news....

A lot of them know this stuff is happening (and why) long before anyone else and I'm often told details at work police are not even aware of but are common knowledge amongst our service users (we report Intel obvs) , they don't watch news at ten for tactics