For example, can you think of a media story about policing that changed your attitudes either favourably or unfavourably? Have your attitudes been changed by a story shared through social media - how? Do you pay more or less attention to different forms of media?
The media forms our opinions, sadly, because we do not have the time in our busy lives to go into depth about issues that are importtant to all of us. We don't look at the pros and cons of any of our major problems in society - and we are really only interested in 'how does this affect me, or my family' - we rarely look at the wider implications. This is where the media scores heavily, because not only do they have the financial resources to carry out what is called 'investigative reporting' - but they also make it a strong policy to recruit capable prople and pay them well to bring exciting, interesting, 'informative' stories to our eyes. Loth as we might be to question the ethics of the press, it seems at times it is not possible for them to let their consciences get in the way of a good story. Inevitably, in human society, while they end up satisfying our need for news stories, they damage vulnerable individuals who might be the 'star' of an evnt. We also very much these days tend to think that we need the media to look after our interests because we might not trust our government to do so.
What is the influence of the media in regard to the police? It must have some influence, since people I've talked to about their attitudes to the police have given views which varied from disinterest to downright dislike - and it should be said that the only offences I could glean from them were minor motoring offences. These were older people, not great users of social media - so that left the Press, T.V. reports, and word-of-mouth as being possible agents of influence. There does seem to be a pervading attitude of distaste and reluctance to talk about the police, and I wonder if this is widespread through soiciety?
Yes, there are two media clips which have changed my attitude favourably - the policewoman dancing at Manchester Pride Sep. 3rd, and the Washington policewoman dancing only this week - these two events showed the 'humanity of the cop' - but we so rarely see police on our streets that some of us have forgotten what they look like, When you never see them, eventually they might become the enemy.
No, my attitudes are not influenced by stories from social media - but my generation does not 'live online' - social media is an extremely effective tool for influencing people, More attention is paid to TV, mainly BBC or SKY.
Greatly! I recall the shooting of a Brazilian around the time of the bombings in London. This stayed in my mind for a long time.
Thank you for your comments and reflections. This was a striking phrase "we so rarely see police on our streets that some of us have forgotten what they look like, When you never see them, eventually they might become the enemy"
The clips that you refer to can be accessed below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wxO-hWdmIk in Washington DC
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lm_PyZPePc0 in Manchester
The ten year anniversary of the Stockwell shooting was earlier this year, there is an academic analysis of the events leading to Jean Charles de Menezes' death on
The media like to sensationalize things, but they do have an important role to play in terms of transparency and democratic accountability. The media are part of necessary mechanisms to keep the police and other state bodies accountable to the citizens, a requirement that they often forget or would rather ignore if they could.
Thank you for raising that important point about the role of the media in accountability. A recent book by Sage discusses this broader topic in the U.S. - Walker, S. E., & Archbold, C. A. (2013). The new world of police accountability. Sage Publications. An earlier conference paper is available on
One other aspect to this topic is that many police forces and officers are also actively engaged in producing different forms of media, for instance: twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and blogging. Potentially these offer more direct routes into public conversations about the nature of policing. Below is a recent guest blog by Michele Larmour who is an Assistant Chief Constable at West Midlands Police.
The media – local through to national and international - play a significant role in how the police are viewed by the general public. The vast majority of us, happily, seldom come into contact with the police and therefore our perceptions of them are strongly influenced the media rather than personal experience. Notwithstanding the various political ‘leanings’ of various media, notably newspapers, reports of police activity seem more negative than positive; successes are reported but they seem to be outweighed by reports of failings. This may be a reflection of the old adage that ‘bad news sells papers’ but it may also be due to our high expectations of the police and the strength of our feelings of disappointment when they are not matched in reality.
Thank you for the reply it's true most people do not come into direct contact with the police. There has also been debate about whether contact with the police improves confidence. One research finding has been that some attitudes that are relevant to confidence can even worsen after contact with the police. Bradford, Jackson and Stanko suggest three components to public confidence: effectiveness, fairness and community engagement. In a study of data collected on behalf of the Metropolitan Police, 15% of people sampled had initiated some kind of contact with the police (perhaps by reporting a crime) and only 5% experienced contact that the police initiated. They found that:
any type of contact (including well-handled encounters) has a negative impact on public attitudes towards police effectiveness. But we also find that positively received encounters can improve public confidence in police fairness and community engagement. And... perceptions of increased visibility and receipt of information can improve all three components of confidence (effectiveness, fairness and community engagement) [so] treating individuals with fairness and respect and providing a more visible and accessible police force may well help improve public confidence in policing (page 21).
Their analysis shows confidence has different parts (effectiveness, fairness, engagement) but it is puzzling why some people's attitudes don't improve after contact. Indeed, even if people have a positive experience of contact with the police this may not lead to improved ratings when asked about their general attitudes. One explanation - which may partly be down to the media - the authors give is that
pre-existing ideas shape how experiences are interpreted; the social, cultural and emotional ‘baggage’ brought to an encounter with the police may have a determining role in how both process and outcome are interpreted. So, for example, positive encounters may not lead to improved overall assessments because they are either expected (by those with previously positive views about the police) or viewed as oneoff freak occurrences (among those with previously negative views). In contrast, unsatisfactory contacts could challenge previously positive views and reinforce previously negative ones (page 23).
The quotes are taken from: Bradford, B., Jackson, J., & Stanko, E. A. (2009). Contact and confidence: revisiting the impact of public encounters with the police. Policing & society, 19(1), 20-46.
Perhaps because it is such a frequent occurrence, stories about missing persons don't always make it into the media, although they take up a lot of police time. The link below gives the background behind how many missing persons the police deal with. As the largest force the Metropolitan Police dealt with 42,956 of these last year.
http://www.nationalcrimeagency.gov.uk/news/769-police-get-six-thousand-missing-person-reports-a-week
Joint Enterprise
A high profile ruling on February 18th was about changes to how a controversial law of "joint enterprise" should be interpreted. One thing that was interesting about following this across different media was the different way in which this ruling was reported, particularly its sensationalization in some tabloid papers. For instance the Mail Online reported that:
Killer of Becky Watts, thugs who kicked Garry Newlove to death on his doorstep and the duo who murdered Stephen Lawrence: All could appeal after Supreme Court ruling.
This kind of reporting prompted some legal commentators to tweet "The only ones getting away with murder are to be the press" and "The nearer the front page a legal story, the more likely it will be false and misleading. This completely untrue." (more is on http://www.legalcheek.com/2016/02/lawyers-unite-as-tabloids-butcher-supreme-court-joint-enterprise-story/)
The judgement itself is available on:
https://www.supremecourt.uk/cases/docs/uksc-2015-0015-judgment.pdf
A key phrase in this is the description of joint enterprise (p2):
In Chan Wing-Siu [the name of a previous case] it was held that if two people set out to commit an offence (crime A), and in the course of that joint enterprise one of them (D1) commits another offence (crime B), the second person (D2) is guilty as an accessory to crime B if he had foreseen the possibility that D1 might act as he did. D2’s foresight of that possibility plus his continuation in the enterprise to commit crime A were held sufficient in law to bring crime B within the scope of the conduct for which he is criminally liable, whether or not he intended it.
The court has not abolished joint enterprise https://arrestingconversations.wordpress.com/2016/02/18/joint-enterprise-hasnt-been-abolished/ stating instead:
It would not be satisfactory for this court simply to disapprove the Chan Wing-Siu principle. Those who are concerned with criminal justice, including members of the public, are entitled to expect from this court a clear statement of the relevant principles. We consider that the proper course for this court is to re-state, as nearly and clearly as we may, the principles which had been established over many years before the law took a wrong turn. The error was to equate foresight with intent to assist, as a matter of law; the correct approach is to treat it as evidence of intent. The long-standing pre Chan Wing-Siu practice of inferring intent to assist from a common criminal purpose which includes the further crime, if the occasion for it were to arise, was always a legitimate one; what was illegitimate was to treat foresight as an inevitable yardstick of common purpose.
Whilst the implicit tabloid story of killers being freed is sensationalist, other commentators suggest that there are potential problems that the ruling does not address. Becky Clarke and Patrick Williams argue that the notion of common purpose or "joint enterprise" has meant that people can be convicted of a crime even it has not been proven that they committed the crime. Moreover "joint enterprise" has led to examples of racism in the criminal justice system because this notion of common purpose has been more frequently invoked by prosecutors in cases where defendants were from BME backgrounds. In such cases references to "gangs" were much more common than in references to white defendants. Here are key passages from their article:
Evidence submitted to the 2014 House of Commons justice select committee (http://data.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/committeeevidence.svc/evidencedocument/Justice/Joint%20Enterprise%20followup/written/10886.html) by academics from Cambridge University already indicated that joint enterprise may be disproportionately experienced by black and minority ethnic people. The researchers speculated that this may be due to an association that exists in the minds of the police, prosecutors and juries between young black and minority ethnic people and gangs...
Our research reveals that such associations, used to imply “common purpose” between the defendant and the person who carried out the crime, rely heavily upon racial stereotypes of young black men being involved with violent crime and gangs. Yet the overwhelming majority of joint enterprise prisoners, from all ethnicities, told us that they were not gang members and that this was a “made up feature of the prosecution case”.
Their article is available in full on:
Below is a list of resources and commentaries relating to the Hillsborough Disaster and to the Inquest which found that the 96 Liverpool fans who died at the FA Cup semi-final in 1989 were unlawfully killed. This was the culmination of an extraordinary struggle by the relatives of survivors who in campaigning for justice over many years often had to challenge media representations of the disaster. It was also the longest case ever heard by a British jury — it began March 31, 2014 and concluded April 26, 2016 after hearing from approximately 1,000 witnesses. The Inquest and related official documents are on this link: http://hillsborough.independent.gov.uk/report/
A summary of the questions the jury was instructed to answer and their answers can be found here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-35401436
Other media and academic sources are below.
NATIONAL
https://www.theguardian.com/football/hillsborough-disaster
http://www.mirror.co.uk/all-about/hillsborough-tragedy
http://www.independent.co.uk/topic/hillsborough-inquest
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/51966cac-0d37-11e6-b41f-0beb7e589515.html#axzz48WRhLElH
REGIONAL AND SPECIAL INTEREST
http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/all-about/hillsborough
http://www.sheffieldtelegraph.co.uk/news/local/the-full-answers-from-the-hillsborough-jury-1-7876483
http://metro.co.uk/2016/04/27/what-happened-at-the-hillsborough-disaster-5844823/
http://www.theweek.co.uk/hillsborough/72030/justice-for-the-96-timeline-of-the-hillsborough-inquest
http://www.thetablet.co.uk/features/2/8349/the-hillsborough-disaster-when-saying-sorry-is-not-enough
http://thejusticegap.com/2016/05/hillsborough-greatest-miscarriage-justice-times/
http://www.liverpoolfc.com/hillsborough
INTERNATIONAL
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-soccer-england-hillsborough-idUSKCN0XO1RI
http://torontostar.newspaperdirect.com/epaper/viewer.aspx
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/sport/news/article.cfm?c_id=4&objectid=11629245
TV, RADIO, NEWSFEED
https://t.co/EXLIPcS2QK (the BBC's Documentary)
http://www.channel4.com/news/hillsborough-disaster-liverpool-fans-unlawfully-killed
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-20782891
http://talkradio.co.uk/hillsborough-disaster-inquest
http://www.newsnow.co.uk/h/Sport/Football/Premier+League/Liverpool/1989+Hillsborough+Disaster (this is a continuously updated, as well as historical newsfeed that links to hundreds of articles across all news outlets)
The leading academic voice is Professor Phil Scraton: http://www.qub.ac.uk/sites/StaffGateway/Ourstaff/ProfessorPhilScraton/
Selected publications from Professor Scraton are:
Scraton, P., Jemphrey, A., & Coleman, S. (1995). No Last Rights: the denial of justice and the promotion of myth in the aftermath of the Hillsborough disaster. Liverpool: Liverpool City Council.
Scraton, P. (2009). Hillsborough: The Truth. Random House.
Scraton, P. (2013). The legacy of Hillsborough: Liberating truth, challenging power. Race & Class, 55(2), 1-27.
Local news media can play an important part in shaping commumities' perceptions of the police. They can also be a means of raising awareness about crimes that might otherwise be hidden or go unrecognised. In this link below several forces use local news media to comment on and make people aware of a pan-European problem - modern slavery:
This has also been a policy priority for the former Home Secretary, and now Prime Minister Theresa May
One aspect to the influence of the media is the use of social media accounts by police forces, officers and other stakeholders. Whilst some officers have an account in their name, others choose pseudonyms - these can allow anonymous posting and greater freedom of expression than police "corporate" accounts. There are even award schemes for such accounts:
Social Media Investigator
This award is given to the law enforcement investigator at any worldwide law enforcement agency who, as a practitioner, has used social media successfully to solve crime. The Social Media Investigator practices appropriate security measures and supervision in his/her investigations.
Civilian Award of Excellence
This award is given to the individual civilian member or employee of a law enforcement agency who has singularly demonstrated overall excellence in the use of social media to improve public safety and/or enhance his or her agency’s community engagement and reputation. This individual is creative and innovative and shares what s/he knows by mentoring others, participating in public speaking opportunities and leading by example.
Social Media Campaign Management
This award will go to the law enforcement agency which has met its stated goals with a documented social media campaign. The campaign is designed to address a significant problem or educational issue within the agency’s jurisdiction. Nominations should include a description of how success was measured.
From a world-wide scheme http://connectedcops.net/connectedcopsawards-2014/
