Should the National press report on primary school lockdowns?

[Lazytiger]

Why aren’t the national press reporting the primary school lockdown near Birmingham? Only GB news and local news outlets reported it. I haven’t seen anything in the broadsheets/TV news.

AIBU to expect the National UK press to report things that happen in the UK?

In the last two days two school lockdowns have been reported, but only locally.

One was a report of schools in Weston-super-Mare that locked down due to a suspect person with a knife. The second was a school near Birmingham called Shireland Hall primary Academy. Where a gang wearing balaclavas and carrying weapons entered the school and threatened teachers and pupils.

Am I being unreasonable to expect the press to report what is happening in this country?

You may argue that the first schools didn’t come to any harm so perhaps nationally reporting something that would just cause concern is the right thing to do (I don’t, but understand others might) But the second school, I feel, should have been more widely reported. Perhaps it will be. But it happened on Tuesday and it is now Thursday.

Googling the school in Birmingham I was surprised to see Birmingham live have reported several lockdowns over the year and other schools in other areas come up in the search too.

I recall a while ago that we had rolling news on the fires in California. Other than telling us there had been fires in California the 24-7 News coverage wasn’t adding much detail. There were plenty of complaints at the time that this was to distract the population from the ongoing Rotherham case. Something that was of far more interest to the UK population. Thankfully the media didn’t succeed and people didn’t forget about those girls.

Is this the same reason for the under reporting - race relations?

Regardless of the worry these incidents may cause in the wider population I feel it is the job of the UK press to report these and to not, on our behalf, decide what we should be told and what we shouldn’t.

We had to listen to how many people died ‘with’ covid on a daily basis, yet there seems to be zero interest in reporting ongoing threats to our children.

They may have been told not to, to prevent copycat attacks and to avoid mass panic

I haven't heard anything about it. I agree it could cause panic and also possibly encourage an attack?

Looking at my search results this is happening regularly anyway. Isn’t it more likely they don’t want the mass protesting or people taking their children out of school?

Do you think it is reasonable for the press to control what we are told. Isn’t their job to report what is happening not act as gatekeepers for the government/police? Have they learned nothing from the diabolical reporting of the attack in Southport?

The first none Gaza/China spy/Tory conference/Beckham Netflix article on the Telegraph online today is “Police attacked with paint in Farrow & Ball standoff”. They think this is more important to report. Easier to report as they say the perpetrator has MH issues. A one off, nothing to see here but look at us doing our job and attending crime IRL. A nice PR piece.

"a gang wearing balaclavas and carrying weapons entered the school and threatened teachers and pupils"

WTAF??
I mean, the first school is bad enough and should've been reported. But this ☝️ what on earth, something like that happening on British soil should be huge national news.
And together they help build a picture if there are other occasions in future.

Yes they should be reported on OP, properly, by mainstream news to reflect the seriousness of the event. I don't use any other social media tbh and this is the first I heard of it.

Possibly because it's been investigated and found to be either a non-major issue or a very local issue? For example, suspect person with a knife nothing to do with the school and part of an entirely unrelated matter or no knife actually involved a s was simply a case of it being mistaken. Second example, former/current pupils being disruptive or pupils from another school in an altercation with pupils from that school.

School I worked at went into lockdown after a parent phones the office and reported seeing a man with a weapon inside the school grounds. Buildings/classrooms were locked down and police were called. It was one of the caretaking team with a rather pointy pair of industrial grade shears that must have looked like a machete from a distance. Should it have been reported on in the press? No. Parents were informed there'd been a lockdown and that it was a non-issue. Had another lockdown a few months later when a snake was found in the corridor, it had escaped from one of the nearby houses and closed up near the heating vent. It wasn't poisonous/dangerous but to keep it safe and prevent chaos, we had basic level lockdown where children work as normal but doors/windows/blinds are closed and children cannot leave the classroom unless accompanied by an adult (same level of lockdown we had for the suspected intruder, FYI, it's only a hide situation of someone is in the building which had never happened to me in all the years I was in schools).

I think YABU to imply the non-reporting is a race issue rather than it just turning out to not be newsworthy.

Why would people mass protest schools being locked down when a potentially dangerous circumstance occurs?

So I googled the schools you talked about.

Weston-super-mare: man not actually near or in a school or attempting to get into schools. A member of the public thought they saw an armed man, local area was put into precautionary lockdown while police did a search. After speaking to the public and reviewing various CCTV systems, police concluded it was a well-intentioned error on behalf of the person who reported it. In other words, a mistake. And these were details I found in a national newspaper, by the way so it was reported on.

The one in Birmingham: some parents noticed a group acting suspiciously near home time so the school was put into lockdown as a precaution. Police attended and found no gang in the area, nor had any staff seen said gang. Police are investigating but nothing so far. So again, probably a misunderstood situation or, dare I say, a little bit of drama-llama shit-stirring either for attention, to prove a point, or to cause trouble. Also, I again got these details from a national newspaper outlet.

Is that the right thing to do though?

I only heard about it from someone spamming the comments board of another article, calling it a deliberate reporting blackout (so of course I had to Google it!).

Will this not just cause more panic and anger when people find? That this is happening, but it’s been decided that it is better for the collective UK population to be fed a report on Victoria Beckhams Netflix documentary rather than worrying our pretty little heads with reports of threats to our children?

Someone posted on Mumsnet before summer worrying about lockdowns and sending their child to school. Most people said she was worrying for nothing (including me) and not to home educated for only this reason. That advice was based on lack of reports of attacks on primary schools and a trust in the Government to be monitoring the evil bastards who might do this. After the recent synagogue attack (which the Jewish community said in advance was a ‘when not if’ event) and seeing all these local lock down reports I feel pissed at not being told what is happening in this country unless someone is actually killed. What is the point of a Free Press?

But there isn't a reporting blackout and neither school was in any danger as both lockdowns were entirely precautionary...

OK but I find it odd that the news outlets haven’t removed the stories if they are false.

But nothing actually was happening with the schools you’re on about. Lockdown was just a precaution.

So in both cases, nothing actually happened.

The article I read said masked men had entered and threaten teacher and staff. If this is not the case and those reports are still out there then they need to be retracted. These are from local news outlets not conspiracy websites.

Well, looking at the news outlets involved, they have got a bit of an agenda.

Ill tell you what did get into national news, though - our school closed for one day this week because an external contractor died (natural causes) on the premises. Which is very sad, but news?

Why is GB news so obsessed with race?

The stories present the known facts about the issue as they were understood at the time the article was written. Why would they go back revise the article, especially as people like you would then accuse them of altering the news to fit some tin-hat agenda?

Why would GB news and other trash sites remove false articles? They want to whip up the idiots into a frenzy and get them protesting over imaginary enemies. They know their readers are mostly not very bright and unlikely to research further.

But the 'news outlets' you're referring to aren't really news outlets. They're just propaganda machines with their own agendas. They don't care one bit for journalistic standards, or if they're stretching the facts, their whole MO is to stir up hatred and division.

Contact the sites and complain then.

Dog-whistling to the lowest common denominators within society to try and increase their views. Basically the televisual equivalent of click-bait rather than actual serious news.

Can you at least link to these articles?

I've just looked at the GB news article and a couple of local ones. They all have the quote from the police (at the bottom of the article) saying that they were called to investigate reported sightings of a gang, but no gangs were found in the area. So basically they've just kept their sensational headline but then updated the content quietly at the bottom.

Edited to add: the local articles are almost word for word copies of the GB article

@Lazytiger, so would you like the national press to report every single school lockdown no matter what the reasons?

Schools are very very cautious as you would expect. Any reports of anything in the local area they lock down. I don't know the figures but I would imagine 95%+ of school lockdowns are for errors (such as the ones people reported here, maintenance staff with a pointy stick, member of the public with a knife that wasn't a knife) or they are for totally separate events that happen in the local area but are in no way related to the school.

If your second example had actually happened as described, a masked gang "invaded" the school and threated staff and pupils I would absolutely expect this to be fairly headline news. A school locked down because someone thought the say a man a mile down the road with a knife that turned out to be a comb... not so much.

Because then idiots would start rattling on about their removal and making it into some kind of conspiracy theory. Also it's poor journalistic practice to just delete stories - you amend them instead.

I don't think major news stories get missed, but 99% of the time lockdowns are precautionary and don't come to anything. It's like saying report on it each time a school fire alarm goes off without it being a test - I've never been in a fire at a school but I remember going to line up on the playground about a dozen times because of a false alarm. Same equivalence. Only report when it's worth reporting.