After knee-jerk reactions and soundbites we must join up the dots between cause and effe
It can’t be said that covering terrorist attacks is easy, but, to a degree, it is at least straightforward. The gun is fired, the knife wielded, the bomb goes off and we dispatch our brightest and best. They go to the scene, find out what happened, talk to those in range, file their stories. In the days that pass, we mourn the dead, assess the claim of responsibility. Praise the first responders. The world moves on.
But what happens when the horror comes in instalments. When there is no one scene of the crime? No claim of responsibility, no immediate and dastardly logic?
Such has been the experience again in past days as the news media has tried to get to grips with an upsurge in London’s knife and gun crime. It was Easter – relatively news light – so the story featured prominently. It led the Ten O’Clock News and Newsnight and made it to the Today programme.
The Sun splashed on the drive-by shooting of 17-year-old Tanesha Melbourne-Blake, the 47th suspected murder in London this year “She died in mum’s arms”. “How many more innocents must die,” demanded the Express, reporting her death and that of 16-year-old Amaan Shakoor, shot just a few miles away. “Another senseless murder shames nation”, the paper said. It also provided a graphic list of the “ruthless gangs that blight Britain’s major cities”.
The sequence of killings was, indeed, horrific. Each yielded its backstory of the bubbly personality, the futility of potential cut short.
But for those who live in the capital, who watch BBC London News or read the Evening Standard, there was, sadly, nothing revelatory. The variant was the tempo and aggregation. It was like watching a familiar movie speeded up.
Like every modern country, Britain faces problems both acute and chronic. The problem with youth violence and consequent community tragedy, spans both categories.
I regard our media as peerless in its coverage of the acute. Consider the depth and breadth of coverage when disaster strikes, when the plane crashes, when lives are taken. The long ingrained tradition of ingenious ferreting means information is quickly unearthed and professionally communicated.
Sometimes, the tradition is pushed too far; witness the condemnation of the Kerslake Report into isolated incidents of press misbehaviour after the Manchester Arena bombing. But generally, we know what to do when tragedy strikes and do it well.
When the problem is chronic, however, we suffer system failure, and therein lies a problem. So often the chronic, underlying problem explains the acute. By failing to be aware of, or understand, the chronic problem, we are constantly surprised by the acute. So it was with the Easter killings when the chronic problem of youth violence became the acute one of multiple deaths. How to explain them?
There was no shortage of an emergency diagnosis … Police cuts: Sophie Linden, the deputy mayor for policing in the capital blamed the government for disastrous economies. Lack of youth provision: up popped a phalanx of youth leaders detailing the struggle they have making a viable and valuable contribution. Lack of mental health provision. Gangs: I saw testimony from figures who were once in “gangs” but have since straightened out. They, too, talked of how hard it has become to divert “at risk” youth from that path. Stafford Scott, the venerable, straight-talking community leader from Tottenham, was called to pronounce, as he is whenever the acute manifests north of the capital. Think of the Broadwater Farm disturbances and the disorder after the shooting of Mark Duggan seven years ago. If in doubt, seeking orientation, call Stafford. I know that’s the drill. I have done it myself.
And all that has its place in the immediate aftermath. But is this really the best way to get to grips with what’s happening? Surely the extent the media was blindsided with regard to the anger and alienation that led to the Brexit vote should have told us something. Ditto the blind spot we discovered when the Grenfell Tower burnt down and we suddenly were exposed to lives and a world we barely knew existed; and didn’t need to until the chronic became acute.
This is not a criticism. It’s an observation. And it’s not a blanket assertion. Some reporters have very noticeably hit the road since the Brexit vote. The Guardian’s John Harris was garlanded at this year’s British Press Awards for doing just that. Gary Younge has won well deserved awards and plaudits for his ongoing project on knife crime Beyond The Blade.
It is laudable that they and others – notably the Evening Standard – have elected to go beyond the acute, and it is encouraging that press peers have feted them for doing so. But even better would be a sense that, within the decision to celebrate that form of journalism, lies a statement of intent.
Can we say there is sufficient space in the press, on television and radio and online for the sort of pieces that flag up chronic conditions before tragedy strikes. That truly joins the dots? The lack of youth opportunities, the way that young men who fail at, and who are failed by, schools exercise their limited options thereafter. The way they coalesce. Space for journalism that examines the assumptions.
It’s a gang problem, we’re told. What is a gang? Is it like the Mafia with leaders and a structure. Or are we talking about mates who live close by and hang out for want of better things to do? What is the draw of that way of life? How many of the categorisations and definitions relied upon, as we scramble to cover the acute, actually bear relation to people’s lives?
There are practical implications to recalibrating. Inquiry into the chronic takes time and commitment. It incurs financial and opportunity costs. I was impressed with the approach explained to me by a BBC journalist friend in the days after Grenfell. “My boss has told me to go down there, and not come back,” she said. It means, perhaps, dwelling a bit more on journalism some might deride as worthy.
In the 1980s, in a former life at the BBC in the south-east, I was one of a network of community affairs correspondents. Every English region had one. Our brief was to connect with the people and communities routinely overlooked, and to air their stories. Network News had its own; it was a stepping stone for the now celebrated bulletin anchor Reeta Chakrabarti. Time moved on, and so did the network of correspondents, but while it lasted, the initiative did pay due regard to the fact that we didn’t know all we should, and that the omission was important. Maybe, if there is to be a journalism that links the chronic to the acute, the time for that thinking has come again. Disaster arrives, tragedy strikes and quickly we must explain it. Wouldn’t we better inform the public if we were better informed ourselves?
