'Coach Crash Syndrome'
I call it "coach crash syndrome". No sooner have we digested the details of a particularly nasty accident involving a coach, than drivers all over Britain career off the road, killing and injuring their passengers.
It is an illusion, of course. What has happened is that the first incident has given coach crashes added newsworthiness. Fatal road accidents which would normally be ignored by the media become front page headlines.
It is the same with knife crime. A year ago, stabbings bubbled up the news agenda and became part of the national conversation. Violence which had been part of the grim background noise of our society was amplified by the press and so it appeared that young men were dying from knives in unprecedented and terrifying numbers.
However, scrutiny of the figures (and we will get more on Thursday) suggests the "epidemic" was a political and media creation. Each incident is a tragedy, but there is little evidence that such crimes are becoming significantly more frequent.
Nevertheless, sudden concentration upon crimes involving blades prompted the Home Office to launch their Tackling Knives Action Programme with great fanfare. You will almost certainly find that legislation to improve safety on coaches was announced after a whole series of road accident stories appeared in the media.
I am prompted to write about "coach crash syndrome" following last night's shocking story of the young mother jailed for eight years after a court heard of the horrific cruelty she meted out to her two-month-old baby son.
The case, inevitably, is described as having "echoes of the Baby P scandal", and it is right that we recognise that the Haringey tragedy did not herald an end to horrific abuse of children.
There have been a clutch of other national news stories revealing appalling child cruelty and neglect recently - in Doncaster, Dundee, Sheffield and Birmingham. One might be forgiven for imagining that we are witness to a new and appalling wave of brutality.
Here again, though, I suggest we are seeing media interest in ghastly court cases which might previously have been off the press radar.
Latest Ministry of Justice figures for England and Wales show that 493 people were found guilty of child cruelty or neglect in 2007 - 233 men and 260 women. That's hundreds of court cases - enough to provide the newspapers with a story or two every day.
Sixty-nine children were victims of homicide in the most recent annual figures and it is estimated 43 of those youngsters were killed by a parent. That suggests a child dies at the hands of their mum or dad every eight or nine days in England and Wales. And those statistics take no account of a wide range of offence categories which might disguise the brutal maltreatment of a little boy or girl.
One only has to look at the latest figures for children subject to child protection plans [pdf link] to get an idea of the prevalence of serious abuse.
These are figures for England alone: 5,000 children are registered as having suffered physical abuse; 2,300 are being monitored because of sexual abuse, shocking numbers that actually reflect a slight decline in recent years.
On Thursday we get Lord Laming's thoughts on how child protection services can improve in England, a review prompted by the Baby P tragedy. I cannot help but wonder, however, why we had to wait for that high-profile case to inspire reflection.
Like coach crashes and stabbings, horrific child abuse cases are neither rare nor new.
I'm 
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It sounds a bit like Hiesenberg's uncertainty principle; 'the act of observation affects both observer and observed'. The problem is maybe that the media rely on this but often don't realise it, and get stuck in the trap of the media inadvertantly creating the news. This gets worse when the news channels try to make news interesting to gain audience share; it's not intentional or pernicious, but it is dangerous. I think there's only one real solution - the BBC needs to go back to making the news REALLY BORING, dry, filled with facts and not interpretations or snazzy graphics. C'mon guys and gals, you remember dull, don't you???
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It sounds like you are describing the BBC News editorial agenda Mark. Monday through Friday the Today programme etc has an editorial line that is guaranteed to wind people up. But at the weekend.....even should a really grizzly story break.....news is invariably carried in a far more socco voice way. Until it is Monday... and we get back to the business in hand of alarming and generally winding up the population. Is this little more than an agent of social control one wonders? Hats off to you for digging beneath the surface and showing how we are manipulated by our political masters, even if one must never ignore the underbelly of society and its horrors even if, as you say, like the poor it will always be with us.
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Your Coach Crash analogy is more apt than you may think. In the 1990s a school bus driven late at night on a motorway crashed into a parked lorry on the hard shoulder. Sadly all the pupils on board and the teacher driving were killed.
Parliament, as ever, worked itself into a fit of rhetoric and tub-tumping. Something must be done and they were the ones to do it. Their solution ? Another law, of course. But what law could ban bad driving ? None. Instead they ordered all coaches to fit seatbelts. Nobody uses them, they make uncomfortable seats more uncomfortable and they would have been of no benefit in the crash. But MPs felt they were "making a difference" and that is what matters. If MPs are happy then the Minister is happy. If the Minister is happy the Civil Service is happy. The taxpayer's personal freedom is more constrained and they are a little poorer but they are at the bottom of the heap so that doesn't matter.
As is so often the case we already have laws to cover all human behaviour in the UK, even if some are badly written. We just need enforcement that works. If we had personal financial consequences for the enforcers when they fail the taxpayer we'd have an innovation that matters
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You can also add to this list:
o Dangerous dog attacks
o Necrotising fasciitis (remember that??)
o Attacks by hoodies
all of these seem to receive undue prominence in the media, then we hear nothing - as if dogs suddenly stop attacking people, or science suddenly found a cure for the flesh-eating bug!
Although laws get changed as a result of this media attention, you have to question whether the tail is wagging the dog, and if so whether this is good or bad. On the whole, this media feeding frenzy does more harm than good. Laws should be changed in a considered way, with due thought given to the ramifications. Instead the changes are rushed and prove defective as a result.
Statistics are just as bad. They are used so often to 'prove' media stories (like this one), but if recent Governments have taught us anything, it's that statistics cannot always be relied upon to tell the truth. Various reports, tables, essays and figures seem to contradict each other, and every day we learn that the figures don't include this, that or the other. Salmon is good for you one day, and gives you cancer the next!
No wonder we are the confused generation. No wonder our children don't trust us or believe us. The media age has forced us to live in a confused mess, and we trust no-one to make sense of it all.
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You blame knife crime onthe "coach crash syndrome" but,. as part the media, then you are partly to blame.
It s unfair to single out printed reports, radio and t.v. must bear as much responsibility, if your theory is true.
I believe that 15 years (or so) ago, I could walk the streets of most towns after dark with little or no fear of being attacked; not the situation now I am afraid.
The situations that you refer to, coach crashes, knife crime and child abuse and numerous other crimes of violence have increased dramatically. I know this from professional involvement.
What should stimulate a debate is "why?" Why has crime increased so dramatically? Let none just blame the newspapers.
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@ b-b-jack... you comment about crime increasing dramatically, but ignore the fact the government has been constantly introducing new laws for us to break (seem to recall something like over 3-4000 new laws just from Blair alone) add that to an increasing population and it's impossible for crime figures not to go up.
Mark I agree with your comment about media interest in things that would otherwise (and have in the past) gone, not unnoticed, but not hyped to the panic extent that we get. I also wonder how much of this supposed "media interest" is politically motivated/pushed to enable the government to introduce legislation/sway public opinion in the direction it wants.
The same as I wonder about political pressure with the amazing lack of media interest on certain items (BBC "supposedly unbiased" included here) Just off the top of my head the complete lack of any reporting in the mainstream press about the governments push with the EU to remove net neutrality over here.
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#5
"The situations that you refer to, coach crashes, knife crime and child abuse and numerous other crimes of violence have increased dramatically. I know this from professional involvement."
I trust this is meant as irony?
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It's pretty obvious really - but I like how you describe it Mark, maybe we could make this issue into something the public take heed of with its new catchy headline
Been going on for years - I immediately think of Leah Betts and ecstasy (probably because of your extensive drugs coverage) - and again any sane person realised that this knife crime thing was all media hype
Of course there can be good that comes out of it - sometimes it takes media storms to force government to take action, then of course half the time they just do something as a knee-jerk populist response that helps no-one
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In response to comments 3 and 4...
Another example: the reason we have speed limits on motorways (which originally, like the German autobahns, had no speed limit) is also an example of the knee-jerk, ill thought-out legislation that you're talking about.
There were a number of (high-profile) multiple-vehicle, mutliple-fatality accidents in foggy conditions, caused by drivers travelling too fast (and too close) for the conditions. The response? A blanket motorway speed limit of 70 mph *regardless* of the conditions (by the way, 70mph was decided arbitrarily, rather than determined empirically). The upshot is that, because some people died in fog 50 years ago (speed unknown), you are not allowed to drive above 70mph in perfect conditions now.
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I am very disillusioned with all the news media. They all behave like a herd (?) of lemmings, reporting what is fashionable. That is why I watch a variety of satellite news channels, such as Euronews, NDTV 24/7 and Al Jazeera as well as the UK channels. At one time a quality newspaper would give balanced reporting of world news. Not any more. There are no quality newspapers left. They are all daily magazines. The situation in Burma is no doubt just as bad as it has been for many years. It is just out of fashion. Tibet gets some reporting at the moment, but next week it will be out of fashion. The situation there will be much the same. We only know what's really going on by watching foreign tv and researching the blogosphere.
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I can't remember where I read it now (and I almost certainly paraphrase here): "...the average quality of information generated by the media is inversely proportional to the number of media sources..."
Put it another way: "as the availability of news sources grows, the information value of the news being reported will decline"
Never ...ever... forget that the single purpose of a news channel is NOT to disseminate news, but to become more prominent than it's competitors. How is that achieved? By making the stories more sensationalist, of course.
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Indeed the issue of media hype is important, if one were to rely on the media for information one would have a very slanted view of the world.
I am lucky to live in Thailand but follow the BBC closely to see what happens in my 'homeland'.
I remember reading so much (primarily on the BBC site) about the last big outbreak of Foot and Mouth in the UK.
As I was not 'on the spot' the only information I got was from the media. I had to visit the UK around the same time as the unfortunate outbreak.
Frankly, I was expecting piles of dead cattle to pour into my plane the second that the doors of the aircraft opened in the UK. I expected to see a cloud of thick acrid smoke hanging over the entire UK, caused by the burning pyres i expected to find on almost every street corner. I expected to see gangs of destitute cattle farmers wailing for the loss of their herds..... this impression was created almost entirely by reading the BBC website.
The expected rush of rotting carcasses into the aircraft failed to occur......
Indeed while sitting in the very comfortable and punctual Virgin train speeding through the pleasant UK countryside between London and the Midlands - I was struck by the endless fields of cows contentedly chewing the cud while enjoying the gentle British sunshine!
Where i thought is the dire situation I had been expecting - I had to assume that it must have been taking place in some parallel universe.
Only when I had time to look at the 'real story' after the media frenzy had moved on (to coach crashes?) did I discover that the total of poor beasts that had been slaughtered represented only some 5% of the national herd. My point is that the impression I was given by the media was certainly nothing like the situation I saw with my own eyes. Since that point in time I (sadly) believe very little of what i am presented by 'the media'.
The rule of thumb must be - divide it by 1,000 and you might be somewhere near the truth.
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'Coach crash syndrome' is undoubtedly true, but there are also two other characteristics of news reporting that drive me up the wall, and yes - the BBC are guilty of both...
1) Introducing a story with a partisan and attention-grabbing statement, then explaining it. "Children are happiest when born to brother and sister couples. This is the claim made by the Incest Promotion Network today..." This (fictitious) example is obvious enough, but when it becomes less extreme, it can take on the appearance of fact: "Britons are happier and healthier now than at any time in history. This is the claim made today by the Department of Lies and Statistics..."
2) Every time I've had the misfortune to be close the centre of a news story (misfortune because it's always been bad news - good news doesn't seem to sell as well) I've barely recognised the story from the press reports. In one BBC report, four of the six facts they reported were totally wrong. I've always ended up marvelling at the creativity of reporters unable to grasp the actual facts but still have copy to file.
Add to these the fact that astonishing amounts of our money is spent on government press officers and 'media relations' in order to tell the press what version of events to tell us (this is a claim made today by me...) and you might not be surprised that I rarely watch or listen to news broadcasts, and never to inane 'rolling news'. A shame because it doesn't necessarily have to be this way.
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Yes Mark, absolutely right. And it's a dangerous reality, because in every instance of "coach crash syndrome" as you call it, more of our rights are taken away with new legislation, and in most cases there's no particular benefit to the original cause.
I remember Ken Clarke's observation "another bomb, another bill". It's just like that: the government reacts to (even ahead of) public reacting to uneven media coverage; and before you know it we've got doddery old men being arrested at party conferences under terrorism legislation after heckling the speaker, spying and phone-tapping by local authorities, and the rest.
Media Studies in schools gets derided, and in fact I don't know the nature of the syllabus. But I'm very sure that discerning interpretation of media; and discerning the agenda and motives of media, politicians and everyone else we hear, should be some of the most important parts of general education.
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And another thing - coach crash syndrome is very apt and from a drivers point of view, quite bizzarre.
Apart from anything else, most so called coach crashes are in fact mini buses driven by non PCV drivers with no driving hours restrictions often hired by groups of blokes who then try to drive the thing like a BMW.
Result - a plethora of daft regulations most of which, BUT NOT ALL are totally useless.
Now apply this effect to the most prominent recent mantra - Global Warming.
Oh dear, where to start with that one?
It is unbelievable the absolute garbage coming from the BBC on this one - even the head of GW research has asked for the wild claims and overdramatic nonsense to stop but no, everything that happens is the fault of climate change ( is that really the same thing as GW) and the forecasts for the end of the century are dire but conveniently rather a long way off.
Unfortunately, the result of this is going to be some alarming legislation and no doubt an environmental court where you will be punished for helping to cause flooding 100 years hence.............!
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In response to desmoh's comment on 11th March about Coach seatbelts. He states that non- one uses them and they would be of no benefit in a crash.
As a teacher of 25years and one who takes teams on coaches and minibuses every week, I can assure you that pupils of all ages are made to wear their seatbelts every time. Seatbelts were also instrumental in saving my pupils from serious injury during a crash.
If members of the public fail to take the precaution of wearing a seatbelt then it is not the goverment or the "uncomfortable seats" fault. At least there is a choice as to whether you wish to reduce your risk or not.
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Sadly Mark Easton is part of the BBC News team and partly responsible for the media creation of these silly stories that arise from nowhere then just as completly disappear without trace. In this respect the BBC is no more reliable than the trash outfits like Fox News or the Daily Mail.
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'coach crash syndrome' and 'being seen to take action' even if its ill informed pointles and ultimately has negligible beneficial effect.
Sounds very much like the assorted knee jerk amendments to British firearms law.
Each ban is promised to achieve something or prevent something.
All of which can be seen to be ineffective at preventing the circumstances that promted the knee jerk in the first place.
Remember the handgun 'ban' which was promised to 'get those weapons of our streets'. How many dead and injured in handgun related violence since 1997....
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