Media reporting and disability hate crime: Katharine Quarmby

Abstract

The criminologist Professor Robert Reiner puts it well: ‘The mass media are saturated with news and fiction stories graphically portraying the violence and anguish suffered by those experiencing crime.’ He explains that crime stories have ‘long been sources of popular spectacle and entertainment, even before the rise of the mass media’ but that in recent years, with the rise of ‘infotainment’ and the police turning to the media to assist their investigations, the ‘media and criminal justice systems are penetrating each other increasingly’ (Reiner, 2007). Reiner’s theory has been backed up and confirmed, of course, by recent events in Britain, where it has become clear how closely one tabloid newspaper in particular, the News of the World (and its owner, News International), was linked to the Metropolitan Police (BBC, 2011) This media saturation theory holds very true of crime stories involving disabledpeople, which are often reported extensively, in the tabloid and broadsheet press, radio and TV, particularly when they involve sexual overtones, torture or, as is too often the case, culminate in murder. The role of the media in highlighting crimes, and sometimes challenging the criminal justice system’s response to them, is also generally accepted as being potentially powerful. One particularly powerful example is that of the observational documentaries made by Roger Graef, documenting police officers from the Thames Valley force, in his words, ‘aggressively interviewing’ an alleged rape victim (Graef, 2008). The resulting press furore about the documentary series kick-started a process of reform within the police service which has, as a result, overhauled the treatment of women alleging sexual assaults and rape (Gregory and Lees, 1999). Another example is the growing disquiet of the media, albeit over an extendedtime period, about the botched investigation by the Metropolitan Police into the murder of Stephen Lawrence in 1993 – one that I, and others, would argue was the first crime to be identified in the public eye as a hate crime in the UK (Iganski, 2008). It is also likely that the media’s role in highlighting social injustice could become even more powerful, as social networking has created new forms of journalism, including both ‘citizen journalism’ and ‘blogging’, accessible to all, including the victims or friends of victims. However, despitethat state of media, in particular print (tabloids and the middle-market newspaper – I avoid naming a particular paper for legal reasons), TV and radio remain extremely powerful. They both shape public opinion and can put pressure on those in positions of power to bring about reform.