Sir Ian Blair's comments on the Soham murders

[Meanoldmummy]

Sir Ian Blair has come under fire this morning for claiming that the massive media coverage of the Soham murders constitutes "insititutional racism". He told the Metropolitan Police Authority that "almost nobody" could understand why the case had received so much attention. He also asked whether the Metropolitan Police devoted the same resources to murders of white/non-white victims.

He highlighted the difference in coverage of the recent murders of white lawyer Tom ap Rhys Pryce and Asian builders' merchant Balbir Matharu.

The Metropolitan Police's Richard Barnes has angrily rejected the remarks and called them "insensitive and shocking".

What do you think?

Damilola Taylor and Stephen Lawrence both had huge media covering. Surely it is becasue they are children???

Sir Ian Blair did concede that an "exception" was made in the Damilola Taylor case. Some might accept this - others might say it undermines his original remarks.

I think that he makes a valid point in a rather idiotic way which will push a lot of buttons. Crime against black people is, apparently, shockingly under-reported.

Well, I do think there's far more media interest when pretty white girls and women are killed than when pretty (or non pretty) black/asian girls, boys or women are killed, I really do. IIRC there was a case just as shocking just after Soham but with far less media coverage. See, I can't even remember the name but that was also the murder of a child where we heard very little about it in media terms. I also remember reading somewhere that the red tops were delighted that Sarah Payne's mother was so photogenic because it sells more papers (can't remember where, sorry). I abhor the prurient interest of the tabloid press in crimes involving women, girls, children and I think their reporting is very often irresponsible and misogynistic especially wrt rape.

I guess comparing it to The Soham Murders was the shocking part. This woudl have received the same kind of coverage if they were Black or White becasue of the horrific nature and becasue they were kids. He coudl have chosen his comparisons a little better and then people might well have listened. Agree Mi, shockinlgy underreported

Also crimes against people with learning disabilities, incidentally...right, must go and pay attention to ostensibly poorly Inferiorettes!

But is that not his point?

Yes it was tragic and horrific that two little girls were murdered - but is not tragic and horrific when any person - child or adult, black or white, is killed.

The fact that they were photogenic little girls doesn't actually change how horrific it was, but I am sure it did affect how much publicity it got.

Agree that a valid point has been made crassly by Sir Ian Blair.
Some cases press all the right media buttons, there is no doubt. A couple of years ago a teenage girl disappeared from her home in SE London and was thought to have been murdered. She came from a troubled home and was not photogenic, or seemingly much missed by anyone other than her mother who campaigned tirelessly for finding her daughter's murderer and her body. Eventually the body was found, by chance, and eventually the killer, a convicted child abuser and rapist released on licence elsewhere in the UK, was sentenced. Her mum remains very bitter about how little media support she was given.
I think there are many sectors of society where crime is under-reported. Stephen Lawrence died very close to where I live and the men everyone locally knows were responsible remain free to continue abusing other residents purely because of their skin colour

I'm not sure that the Soham case received the amount of publicity it did because the girls were photogenic. I think it was more because they were children. And it wasn't just here. We went on holiday to France when they first went missing and the coverage on French television seemed to be on a par with in the UK.

I remember the Babes in the Woods murders in Brighton many years ago and that received the same amount of publicity. They were white too.

I'm not sure that Sir Ian Blair is right as the murder of black children and those of other ethnicities seem to produce an awful lot of print and television coverage.

It seems that he was trying to do something positive by getting people to acknowledge the disparate attention given to black and white crimes, but I'm not sure he has his facts right.

Is there a link?

I think he was making a very valid point. I do think Soham wasn't a great example though- I think that the cases where children are missing for days, and people are wondering what has happened, and fearing the worst, are always given greater coverage than those where the first you hear about it is when someone has already been murdered. I did think things were improving a bit- the murder of the black teenager in Liverpool who sounded so lovely did actually get a lot of coverage. Again, I think it was mainly because his family were so articulate and forgiving, but at least there was no apparent race bias there.

I can see from the BBC website IB has just apologised for the way he made the remarks and especially to the parents of the Soham girls. I agree with him, but it was a clumsy way of expressing it I think.

And what about the press coverage of the bloody whale last week? How insane was that??

strangly enough I was thinking about this just two days ago, remember the 15 year old girl that went to make a phone call in a public phone box, on a S London council estate a few months ago?

Her body was found in pieces in a stairwell after being hacked apart in some mad mans flat. Think it made about page 4 in the papers.

Then in another case - sally-anne was found raped and murdered just yards from her home and had much more media coverage, obviously some of this media coverage is geared towards finding her killer.

but i bet that you all can remember the sally anne case and not the other girl, who admittedly- i cant remember the name of either.

Being photogenic is important when it comes to media coverage and I won't pretend it doesn't. But what also matters a lot to newspapers - and that's because it matters to US - is when a case comes along that nearly everyone can identify with - that has that 'that could be me or mine' factor. The Soham case had that in spades. Nice kids, ordinary, loving family, children just like ours doing the kind of things our children do, just gone - whoosh - snatched and murdered by someone you couldn't anticipate, would never expect to do such a thing, their school caretaker. You couldn't say, 'oh, they were heroin addicts/bad parents/part of a drugs underworld' - it was very immediate. So was Sarah Payne. They had that true nightmarish quality and more importantly, a real immediacy, because of that.
The recent killing of the lawyer had a similar feel - he was just a normal, nice man, walking blamelessly home after work to the house where his fiance was waiting. It could be you, your son, your husband.

I think the point about crime being covered differently is true but yet again he suffered a dose of foot-in-mouth syndrome. They shouldn't let him out without gagging him first imo.

Papers play on the "people like us" factor - we all like to read about people like us and that drives us to buy the rags/watch TV (how many women secretly have a little bit of allegiance to a Davina/Kate/Jordan etc?). And in the UK newspaper buyers/news media consumers tend to be white because... they report about people "like us". So you get a vicious circle going.

i think one of the reasons the soham murders got so much publicity was because at first they were just missing- there was lots of publicity in a kind of'have you seen this child' way.it got people involved iyswim.

Message withdrawn

I'm black and so are a lot of my friends and none of us buy newspapers because of the overtly racist undertones that accompany too many of their stories. For example, last week my DH (who is white) bought home a free paper and the lead story was the murder of the city lawyer. That was a horrific crime and I'm glad that they now have 2 susupects in custody. What I did not like was the fact that the article was littered with phrases like " two young black men wearing hoodies" and then later "2 black youths in late teens or early 20s in dark clothes". When a story involves a black perpertrator, the editors love to over embellish the fact that they are black. However, when the perpetrator is white, this only ever appears once or they are described as 6 feet with brown wavy hair!

I remember a few years ago a story about the rape of a 15 year old schoolgirl in Birmingham. The story only attracted a small article on about page 10 but I will never forget the last line. It said "the girl, who was black, was not a virgin". That to me sums up how ethnic minorities are generally portrayed in the media. If the victim had been a pretty white girl raped by a black man, that would have been front page news and whether or not she was a virgin, would have been immaterial.

i read it ggg, i found him incredibly critical of the police, im surprised they encouraged him to publish it.

I think the 'it could happen to you' factor is enormously important. And then it matters less what colour the victim is.

The murder of children is always going to get more media attention, especially when there is a hunt for those children before they are found dead.

With many of the other cases they are either adults or they were found dead immediately, without the day or more of searching for them, hoping for a happy ending.

Where a child is missing first of course there is huge media interest. They are hoping again all hope they will be found alive. And when they are not - then everyone mourns the loss.

speedymama i am at that story! i can't believe that was printed! how awful

Message withdrawn

Also in the case of the Soham murders there was the grisly twist that Huntley and Carr had been interviewed by the media expressing their 'concern' which all added fuel.

I agree Sir Ian has put his point rather obtusely, but I too have often wondered how some things hit the front pages for days and yet others do not. But then that 'whale' story was headline news for days. I wonder how many poor people were found murdered and barely commented on my the papers whilst that was in progress.

The Stephen Lawrence case only got proper attention when the Labour Party came to power. I remember prior to that reading a very compelling article in The Guardian entitled "The Other Mrs Lawrence". It compared coverage received up till then by the Stephen Lawrence murder and that headmaster (also called Lawrence) who was murdered outside his school. There was also the case of Ricky Reel, a probably racist murder which received next to no coverage.

I suppose there are many components which make a story "newsworthy" and I think things have improved but his comments do contain a nugget of truth I think, although I feel sorry that the Soham girls' families may be upset by this.