To think the sad death of two public servants killed in the line of their work should be treated equally

[katedan]

Last week we heard the very sad news of PC Harper,s murder while on duty but the murder of social worker Belinda Rose last weekend who was killed while visiting a service user has gone largely unreported.

Why has there been such a difference in the media coverage of these two incidents? Belinda's murder has gone mainly unreported.

Is this as a result of the public having more sympathy with the police service or the fact that PC Harper was young and very recently married and Belinda was a 60 year old women.

AIBU to believe any person murdered while doing a job to help people should both receive the same attention and that Belinda deserves to be honoured as highly as PC Harper?

It is I'm afraid because the TV news have followed the route of newspapers. What gets the most sympathy, what's photogenic, what can fill a debate. They are not much better than those strange glossy mags 'I'm pregnant by my lost at births son'. Better to stick to local news or dig under the headlines online.
Sad but true.
All life is important
Those who lose their lives trying to help others should have the most severe consequences to the perpetrator

When the news broke about PC Harper nobody knew his name, the fact that he was a newly wed, or what his wife looked like.

I don’t necessarily buy the misogyny angle either, the murder of PCs Nicola Hughes and Fiona Bone got much more coverage - thousands lining the streets of Manchester etc.

I don’t know. I’d heard about the murder of Belinda Rose but obviously not on the same scale. It is the media outlets’ decision as to what becomes “big” news. Many media outlets hate the police but like to play the “hero police officer” card in cases like this. I guess it’s just journalistic angles. Easy to write about police officers bravely facing danger every day in order to protect the public, and this is something they all fear. Whereas it’s not seen as part of the job for SWs. Not saying that’s correct, just persecution’s.

What a horrible thread. Also Belinda’s awful murder hasn’t gone unreported, it is in both papers I read the next day, headlines on two news website and has been on every news programme I have watched.
Comments on how pretty his wife is are disgusting.
Some stories make headlines and some don’t. They can’t all have as much surrounding them as others. It isn’t tit for tat. Police are the authority protecting us, and being killed doing so, of course it will make headlines.

Perceptions, not persecutions

I think it's more a police thing than a man thing. There was huge coverage of the murders of Yvonne Fletcher and Sharon Beshenivsky, so much that I remember the both clearly.

I don't know why police get more coverage, maybe just because it's a much more public (as in publicly visible) job that they do. But I don't think it's misogyny (for once...)

If she was killed by the service user, they probably knew straight away who to arrest and there was no advantage to the police in going to the papers. For the policeman, they were trying to get people to come forward as they didn't have a suspect straight away, perhaps a less strong case, so publicising his humanity was an attempt to get witnesses.

I don't think the news should be used as a sort of grown up Facebook or measure of somebody's importance. We'd end up with endless "what about x... what about y..." appeals from families.

It's possible for some things to be both tragic and private. It's possible some families don't want attention, I don't think we have enough information to jump to conclusions on why these particular cases were treated differently.

One other aspect in relation to police and fire fighters is that everbody else is allowed to run away from danger, it was PC Harpers job to run towards danger.

I live in the Thames Valley area and the Thames Valley Police was appealing for people to come forward with information to find the person responsible for it. I imagine the story gained traction because there was a lot of sharing in the first few days with constant updates from the police to keep the investigation momentum going.

LakieLady
Not sure what work you do but I was in a similar field (not SW but similar). In theory, we were meant to double up on home visits etc but workloads being so high, and all the pressures we had, we often had to do lone visits in less than ideal circumstances. There was a lot of pressure over getting these visits done. Things like risk management plans are all very well but people are unpredictable. All the plan does is cover the ass of those in charge if something does go wrong!

Nasty thread

Why a nasty threat????I was interested in the reasons for the differences in reporting and people have made some valid points. Both deaths were horrible and cruel especially for their friends and family.

Social workers are the scum of the earth, woe betide a social worker who through huge caseloads and stress fails to prevent the death of a child by their psychopathic parents.

Both deaths were tragic and should be reported equally.

yes yet again a nasty thread - without any point at all - I thought mumsnet might be a trail blazing site with new ideas and wise words to put the world right . I am learning fast

the old lady who has died of a broken heart after a burglary is getting publicity as they are trying to find those responsible . I hope everyone is on facebook sharing the hell out of that one to find the scum who in affect "killed " her .

It also often depends on whether family or colleagues are willing to talk to journalists. Each article needs a new angle with new pictures. Everyone deals with death differently and some want to speak about their loved one with the press and others don't. That ime is why one death will get more coverage than another.

I hadn't heard about Belinda, despite living relatively close to where it happened. What also hasn't been widely reported is that last Thursday a man waited outside the Home Office in Marsham Street in London with a large knife, and stabbed a civil servant as he left work. That hit close to home because I was working down the road from there that day and as a civil servant it frightened me that I could also be targeted just because of my employer.

There is also an agenda, from some quarters, to arm the Police. So we need 'evidence' that there's a need for this to happen.

perhaps this is a question for the press - and actually both cases got publicity in some papers . But I am not sure any of us can work out which gets more coverage ? and its pretty unhelpful to speculate tbh .

Why the need for pursed lipped thread policing? It's a thread discussing reasons for media coverage and highlighting a social care worker murdered in the line of duty. Snippy little comments about it being nasty are just censorious nonsense, though not as silly as the attempt at dressing fellow posters down for being insufficiently groundbreaking - there are a million trivial threads that daft nugget could have been dropped on

Also Belinda’s awful murder hasn’t gone unreported, it is in both papers I read the next day, headlines on two news website and has been on every news programme I have watched.

I watch, listen to and read news several times a day, every day over a variety of different platforms and hadn’t heard of Belinda Rose’s murder once until I saw the link I posted earlier today.

Because the media makes value judgements.

Police officers are very very important, more important than social workers

They do it all the time see missing white girl effect.

I don't like it either

I mean their value judgements

In general and of course because they go a long way towards shaping how the public view things

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_white_woman_syndrome

I had heard of this case but I believe it is only because I live in the West Midlands.

Both are equally tragic but I wonder if the death of the police officer was more newsworthy due to the way he was killed.

Agree with this. Although both nursery were awful, there is something so sickening and shocking about PC Harper's case, having been dragged along by a vehicle. Not that stabbing is any less horrific, it's more of a common occurrence, very sadly. I think if the roles were reversed there would be more outrage and media coverage of Belinda's death due to the very nature of it. Similar to when PCs Fiona Bone and Nicola Hughes were killed in Manchester. I honestly don't think it has anything to do with gender inequality.