Tabloid TV and political posturing
I was back in the UK this weekend and, for the first time in a long time, found myself watching the early evening news on TV. I should be wary of drawing too many conclusions - or over generalising - on the basis of a single broadcast, but I was struck by how sensationalist the reporting has become.
TV has always been a tabloid medium when it comes to news and - as far as the headline news was concerned - there really wasn’t much to object to. But the “in depth” reporting was appaling.
In a segment on knife crime, we were treated to a series of anecdotes strung together with a complete absence of information. The report blatantly set out to exploit public concern about crime while making no effort to quantify whether crime is rising or by how much. There was no effort to examine why crime might be rising, what is being done about it or what could be done.
Sensationalist reporting such as this serves only to encourage a vague and open-ended concern about crime which can be - and is - exploited by knee jerk politicians looking for easy headlines. And, in the absence if any real information, this headline grabbing quickly deteriorates into a competition to see who can sound the most reactionary.
I was, therefore, more disappointed than surprised to see that Menzies Campbell has joined the bidding.
Apart from anything else, this sort of political chest-beating lets the government off the hook of having to explain why they have failed as badly as this Observer report indicates.
The numbers quoted do indicate that crime rates are rising and that convictions are falling. But what is interesting is why more people are being aquitted:
The blunt truth is that over the entire period 1992-2006, most not-guilty verdicts recorded in the Crown Courts where all serious cases are tried have not been reached by juries at all, but by judges. In fact, where juries do reach a verdict, acquittals have steadily declined from 45 per cent of contested cases in 1992-3 to 38 per cent in 2005-6. Judges’ acquittals, on the other hand, have risen. They fall into two categories: ordered decisions, entered when a trial is due to start because the prosecution says it cannot proceed, or the much less common directed ones, when the judge stops the trial because of a legal problem.
In other words, all of this macho posturing over who can be “tough on crime” or “rebalancing” the criminal justice system is not only dangerously illiberal but also fundamentally dishonest. The problem is not a lack of laws or that defendants have “too many” rights, but that the Crown Prosecution Service simply not bringing people to trial.
Progress is possible, and the Observer article cites a couple of changes - such as prosecutors working more closely with the police and greater support for witnesses - that do improve the likelihood of cases going to trial. But while politicians seek headlines rather than solutions and while the government is able to hype itself off the hook, any improvements will be few and far between.
Monday 29 May 2006 | Paul | TV, Politics
