The Director-General needs to find out how the other 90% live
The Skimmer 7:39pm
Calling for a sense of "perspective" and "proportionality" in coverage of British youth, the BBC's Director-General, Mark Thompson, complained on Radio 4's Today on Tuesday that you could get the impression from much media coverage that Britain was a "nightmare landscape of roving bands of drunken teenagers".
The blunt truth is that, in certain parts of the country, the nightmare is all too real and the BBC has consistently under-reported it. Within 24 hours of Thompson's interview the London Evening Standard was reporting that, in London alone, five children are injured in gun or knife attacks every day. "We know we have a challenge in youth crime," said the head of the Metropolitan Police Violent Crime Unit, unveiling figures which showed that in an eight-month period 321 London children were injured in shootings.
Later on Wednesday, three teenagers were found guilty of murdering a man they kicked to death outside his home in Cheshire. Fuelled on alcohol, they turned on him with sickening, terrifying brutality when he went out to complain of vandalism in front of his house.
Nobody—not even the Daily Mail—believes these young killers are typical of British youth. But for the head of the BBC to claim that the media exaggerates the epidemic of violent crime and yobbish behaviour by teenagers (and younger) which now makes living on so many housing estates intolerable suggests he is in danger of losing the plot. Perhaps he should speak to the murdered man's family before he spouts again on something he is too insulated even to comprehend.
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Comments
Trumpeter Lanfried
January 16th, 2008 9:09pmThey do report crime, of course, but have special rules designed to withhold the ethnic identity of the criminals. We proles are not to be trusted with that information.
TGF UKIP
January 16th, 2008 10:57pmDo not like the new format "click here to read more" one little bit, nor the new mechanism for linking to Melanie Phillips. If it ain't broke why try to fix it?
jo 7
January 16th, 2008 11:20pmI absolutely love the new layout. So much easier to navigate, keep up the good work coffee team!
Chris
January 16th, 2008 11:42pmI agree. I HATE 'click here to read more' formats!!!
Andrew Aguecheek
January 17th, 2008 1:55amI too hate "click here to read more". Where I live, broadband is very slow, and "click here" can take anything up to twenty seconds to deliver.
hiding behind englandism
January 17th, 2008 8:59amClick here to read more is a page counter. It measures what the viewer is actively interested in rather than passively viewing. For example, dear old englandism.com receives over 1,000,000 hits per 12 month period but the page count stats reveal what is meaningfully popular. I suppose Jacqui Smith and her radical website team will be after me now.
Margaret
January 17th, 2008 9:51amBBC and the press feature non-stop gun/knife crime, binge drinking and Muslim terrorism because they were presenting these images as examples of role models. They don't want to feature normal children behaving like decent human beings because that goes against the image of Britain that they are busy trying to create.
Thomas
January 17th, 2008 10:14amI agree. 'Click here to read more' is why I don't read the Telegraph's Three Line Whip.
Kevin
January 17th, 2008 12:14pmBeing run by Liberals, BBC has a vested interest in resisting any form of moral clampdown. If that means propagandising against the facts - however brutal they may be - then so be it.
fleety3000
January 17th, 2008 3:23pmi hate this new format as well,its not needed and it is an obvious attempt to increase the amount of times the page is refreshed therefore more advertising...
David Lindsay
January 17th, 2008 3:24pmNot only should alcohol be beyond children's price range, but it should also be beyond their palates. Did you like beer the first time that you tried it? Yet alcopops and such like are deliberately designed to appeal to children, being too sweet for most adults' tastes. Like proper coffee, or dark chocolate, or Seville marmalade, alcoholic drinks should be such that children wouldn't like them even if they could afford them, which they shouldn't be able to do.
Margaret
January 17th, 2008 3:54pmOne of the most basic truths about dealing with children is that if they behave in a manner that is absolutely horrible then you ignore them. And if they do something kind; original; that requires an effort; is amusing or generally agreeable then you behave in an agreeable way towards them.
The BBC, and the government, do the exact opposite of this tried and tested approach. If children or young people carry guns/knives; binge drink; deal in hard drugs; burgle,mug, rape or vandalise the BBC, and the government, will heap attention, money and treats on them while completely ignoring the much larger number of children who are leading interesting and useful lives.
It is as though the BBC, and the government, wants to send out the message: "This scandalous behaviour is how children act. It is normal. So behave like this and you will be rewarded.".
David
January 17th, 2008 4:26pmI want to add my support to those who have objected to the new 'click here & read more' format. I find that the Spectator site is slow compared to other sites and the new format just adds further delay.
Spearmint Lino
January 17th, 2008 4:48pmTrumpeter Lanfried is correct. The BBC are very coy about reporting violent youth crime, predominantly black on black, or any crime involving non-whites, together with giving almost no coverage to the cases of women who make false rape claims. Mark Thompson lives in a bubble, yes of course he does, he is taken everywhere in a chauffer-driven car and is surrounded by sycophants. His most dangerous trait, however, is that he believes the BBC to have some moral and political remit to enlighten us all in the ways of liberal nihilism or as is is more commonly known, political correctness. He is a dangerous man and should be treated with extreme caution.