Missing persons reportage in the traditional press and social media outlets

The following is a reply I sent to Rachel MacPherson, a journalism student from University of the West of Scotland.  She was writing her dissertation on the media’s representation of victims of crime, in particular missing person cases, and read my post about Serena Beakhurst and wanted my opinion.  I provided answers to her questions, as shown below.  The topic is an interesting one, as for me it highlights differences in emphasis and approach between traditional journalism outputs and online social media platforms. 

Unlike a lot of community media/alternative media researchers and activists, I still believe there is a place for traditional media platforms such as the already established newspapers and tv news.   The Serena Beakhurst story however highlighted the limitations of traditional media in what it covers and considers to be of interest to their audiences, and online social media outlets such as Twitter, Facebook and blogs allows for an additional layer of ‘news’ that would not reach the mainstream, and now also informs the editorial decisions of the mainstream press  if/when those stories eventually reach their headlines.  Although I don’t personally believe in media hierarchies in relation to quality and validity, the Serena Beakhurst case still shows that such hierarchies still exist in relation to power, value and representation.  No one was complaining that certain blogs hadn’t covered the story, the complaints were levelled at the mainstream press and their evident lack of interest.  It can only be a matter of time before the social/alternative media outputs get confident enough to ignore what the mainstream are or are not covering, and see themselves as the media itself, with inherent quality, validity, power, value and considered representation.  Hence the strap-line of this blog – Don’t hate the Media/Become the Media.

Anyway, enough of my preamble, here are my responses to Rachel.

What do you feel are the responsibilities of the press, if any, to report on missing person cases in the UK?

The word ‘responsibilities’ is an interesting one.  It brings to mind the title of James Curran and Jean Seaton’s book ‘Power without Responsibility’.  In the introduction, justifying the title, they say “that something which daily intrudes in our lives in ever more sophisticated ways needs to be, itself, the subject of continual public surveillance.  That the media interferes with us; therefore we have a right and duty to interfere with the media.”  (Curran, J. and Seaton, J. (2003), Power Without Responsibility: The Press and Broadcasting in Britain, Routledge, London, UK, page 4)

That is what I see going on at the moment with regards missing persons.  To answer your question directly, no I don’t think the national press have an automatic responsibility to report on missing person’s cases.  The cold fact is they are private commercial companies in the business of selling news to audiences – and selling audiences to advertisers.  Though I would say local news have more of a responsibility to report missing person stories, as they are directly serving close geographic communities, but the national press have no such obligation to their audiences.  The nationals are interested in what missing person stories can resonate further than the immediate geographic area? (How that is judged is highly debatable/controversial).  They have a responsibility to practice ethical methodologies, and to report fact not fiction, but regardless of what we the public think, the press do not have a responsibility to have to cover a certain type of story.  The agitation and accusation that is happening now however (though the agitation and accusation is far from new), is that the press should be reporting certain stories, especially now when certain stories become big in the blogosphere/twitter, but nowhere to be seen in the mainstream press.

Missing persons is a good case study for this.  When a person goes missing it is a deeply personal and emotional event.  We call friends, friends of friends, family, tenuous links, anybody who might have seen or know something, and of course the police when we know it’s serious.  Now in the internet age we get onto Facebook, Twitter, Blogging, etc.  In these cases social networking will invariably carry this news before any mainstream press may pick up the ‘story’, as the ‘event’ and momentum has happened from the ground up.   So in the case of Serena Beakhurst, it became a huge story online, but wasn’t at all picked up by the mainstreams.  So the online communities (myself included) eager to spread the word to get Serena found started to provide a “public surveillance” on the mainstream press and tried to “interfere” with the editorial decisions.   In the heat of an emotional frustration, accusations started to fly.  So a key question is what did the online agitators, strangers to Serena, (myself included), see in the Serena story, that wasn’t seen or appreciated by the mainstream editors?

What factors of a missing person case make it newsworthy? 

The simple answer is; a good story.  Some hypothetical questions journalists will be asking are; is it out of character?, is it suspicious?, are there any clues?, can the audience relate and sympathize, even if it ends tragically or happily?, what could be the motives of disappearance?, what visual material have we got access to show?, is it unique?, and other questions to judge whether it will be a worthwhile story. 

I’m not in a position to know, but I can only assume that Serena’s story did not answer enough of these questions favorably enough to satisfy the journalists.  This is where the journalists will also be listening to the signals coming from the police and friends they get access to.  Possibly Serena had run away before.  Possibly she had threatened running away in the days leading up to her disappearance, so it wasn’t a surprise.  The headline of Serena, a 14 year old girl goes missing over Christmas – made a startling ‘story’ to us strangers, and we hit the blogs, etc, and it exposed a chasm between the “news values” of the mainstream press and the citizen journalists.  Most citizen journalists (myself included) aren’t journalists at all, they are polemicists.  If I lived in London I MIGHT have gone to interview her mum and friends, but the fact is I didn’t and instead recycled news with my own opinion. 

It’s a harsh judge for an editor to declare what is or is not worthy of being “news”, especially when a missing 14 year old girl get subsequently classed as “not news worthy”, and that is what fuelled the anger and frustration from us online agitators.  I tried to use my blog post first and foremost to help find Serena, with some side digs and the press in the process.  Some other bloggers went on a full-out assault on the press about race bias, etc, with hardly any information about Serena herself, which I did not feel was the appropriate emphasis to be having whilst she was still missing. 

So the Serena case exposed some of the differences in what are considered news values between mainstream press and social media.  It would be the logical prediction that these cases will affect mainstream press more, as they are in a dire need to retain audiences – so they will invariably find new ways of doing what they do, and if that means reporting more missing persons stories (even if only online), then so be it.  It was interesting to note that when the mainstream press did pick up the Serena story, the main emphasis was on how the story grew via Twitter, Facebook, etc, not the fact that she was still missing.

The contrast with Milly Dowler’s disappearance in 2002 I guess is down to the answers to those hypothetical questions and the signals coming from police and friends.  I think it’s also down to the forcefulness of the parents and organizing press conferences, etc.  Serena’s mum in her writing after her daughter was found seemed happy with the police approach and not overly forceful or frustrated, but in the Dowler case the sense of urgency was from the very beginning.  Of course Serena’s mum was still highly worried, but probably the journalists and police respond to different types of urgency reactions in different ways.  The same goes with missing girls that go out with guys they have met on the internet.  The reason they are story classed as stories is due to the still novel nature of the circumstance – the internet as a new cause of crime.  Those stories contain timely modern morality tales of caution for the readers, and allows a bit of awareness raising without looking too preachy.  Many other girls who run away will also be with guys, but if it’s a local lad and not a stranger from the internet then it’s deemed as having less news value, and remains absent from the press.

Do you believe the news media is capable of influencing the public opinion on certain criminal matters?

Most definitely.  Even though public opinion should not matter in a court of law, it invariably will have some influence.  If a jury have down their job well they will return a verdict they ‘know’ is right, even if that flies in the face of public opinion.  Of course this is an idealistic position, as I know there have been tragedies of miscarriages of justice in court that have been influenced the media, public opinion, politics, racism, sexism, etc.  It’s interesting with the Joanna Yeates case how Chris Jefferies the first suspect was absolutely hounded by the press with all his private life exposed, but since this new guy has been charged, it’s all gone very quiet.  I may be naive, but it almost feels like they realized they went too far.  If Jefferies was guilty, it could have been near impossible for him to have had a fair trial.  “Power without Responsibility.”

Does the media select only certain missing persons cases for publication and, if so, why?

Good vs weaker stories, (in the minds of news editors).

Do you believe that by only selecting certain missing person cases to represent, the news media are simply giving the public what they want?

Not really.  I think audiences of news media take what they are given.  It is only the well referenced and media literate amongst the audiences that agitate and say what they are not being told.  Otherwise, people don’t really know what they are not being told.  The majority of audiences don’t question the news.  They may occasionally ask, “Why is that on the news?” (e.g. Take That releasing a new single).  But it is a small minority that will ask, “why was that not on the news?”  That’s the interesting tension now between the mainstream press and social media, bloggers etc. – the online documenters are picking up things the mainstream press don’t know about yet.  If they do get ‘picked up’, that’s fine, if they don’t, there can be claims of a conspiracy of silence.  It’s not really that simple.

Why do you believe there was such widespread media interest in the Joanna Yeates case but a lack of interest in the Serena Beakhurst case?

Professor David Wilson, author of ‘Looking for Laura: Public Criminology and Hot News’, (which you’ll find interesting), was interviewed on the Jeremy Vine Show yesterday on BBC Radio 2 (Mon 18^th April) about these issues.  He said at the same time as the Stephen Lawrence murder a white boy was murdered by an Asian boy, but that didn’t hit any of the headlines or cause any of the ramifications of the public eye.  This to me shows how there’s not a news media rulebook that is cast in stone. 

I said at the time Serena was found that I believed had she been a white girl the mainstream press would have picked it up.  Of course I can’t prove that.  With time passing and reading what her mum had to say, I still believe race played a part, but I think the behind the scenes factors (those hypothetical questions) are also significant.  I now believe it would never have been a front page big news story, but still believe that it would have at least got a mention in more press had she been a white 14 year old from a conventional family, but saying that I have also to recognise that the answers to those hypothetical questions would change, so it would be unfair to compare them as like for like.  And this is the problem with the notion of ‘news values’ – as when all said and done a 14 year old girl was missing – regardless of socioeconomic background, class, race, etc.  But those backgrounds builds the story, and that’s where/when mere facts are not enough for the judgment of news values.  Yes a 14 year old girl is missing, but what type of 14 year old girl?

Joanna Yeates was older, steady job, steady relationship, keys left in flat, missing pizza, it had mystery all over it from the start.  News stories, like drama, needs tension to hook the audience.  It was weighed up with Serena and the 14 year old lost out.  At Christmas there will only be so many missing persons stories the press are going to want to deal with, so the editors took the gamble, and in a depressing gruesome macabre way it paid off.  It obviously sounds cold to discuss such tragic events in this detached commercial way, but that is the commodity that is being dealt with in this business of news journalism.  The mainstream press being silent on the Serena story was not racist, but it did expose a bias – which was a bias of what makes a good story.  I’m sure Serena would have provided a good story, but one seemingly not good enough for the news demographic for audience/readers to care.  The online agitators rightly questioned that logic of judgement. Thankfully it also had a happy ending.  It is depressing to think that only a tragic ending to the Serena story would have vindicated that questioning of the news values status quo.  That is one battle I am so glad to have lost.        

Dr Shawn Sobers – University of the West of England
20^th April 2011

PhD Thesis – BEYOND PROJECT: An Ethnographic Study in Community Media Education

ABSTRACT

BEYOND PROJECT: An Ethnographic Study in Community Media
by Shawn Naphtali Sobers

Research Question
“According to facilitators, participators and trainees of community media educational activity, what are the prime motivations of involvement, and what impacts and areas of sustainability result from the sector’s instances of pedagogy?”

Thesis Summary
The author of this thesis is active as a practitioner working within the area of community media education activity: the focus area of this research.  This research links practice to theory to address the central research question.  It employs methodologies informed by post-colonial theories including auto-ethnography and critical pedagogy to discuss the research findings in context of wider literature drawn from the disciplines of community media, community arts, media education, educational psychology, informal education, anthropology and cultural studies.

Community Media activities operate in a fragmented landscape of practice, making the notions of impact and sustainability problematic issues to negotiate, and presents difficulties with identifying related evidence.  This research presents extensive qualitative ethnographic investigation into the impacts and sustainability in the lives of facilitators, participants and trainees who have been involved in such projects for a minimum of four years.  This research evidences the prime motivations of why these stakeholders got involved with the projects from the very beginning, and maps these findings against the impacts and cultural sustainability as articulated, gaining an insight into both the pedagogic journey of the individuals, and the pedagogic qualities of the media projects.

This study employs a methodology that favours the stakeholders to speak for themselves, presenting individuals articulating what the impacts were on their own lives directly, thus matching the methodology of the study with the principles of the community media sector itself: to enable individuals to represent themselves.  At specific instances throughout this thesis the author will be referred to in the first person, due to the adopted additional methodology of autoethnography, which links analytical interpretation with personal exploration. 

Download pdf of full thesis – click here.

Is Hop Hop Mass Media?

I’ve been talking too much lately, so let’s hear from someone else for a while.

This is Dr Jared Ball talking to DaveyD over at his TV Channel. 

He comes at this subject from a different perspective from the one that talks about Hip Hop as a form of ‘urban media’ via the conscious mouths of Public Enemy and KRS One, etc.  Here Dr Ball talks about Hip Hop as a form of Mass Media in the larger sense, and how the movement has been consciously and unconsciously exploited – economically and psychologically.

This is a powerful 10 minute lecture that contains arguments that I would suggest can also be made about all other music genres and youth sub-cultures.  More than only about Hip Hop, it is about the commercialisation of a cultural phenomena.  But even though I say that, the important thing that makes Dr Ball’s argument so clear and relevant to Hop Hip is that it is a sub-culture that, for better or worse, has large influence of particular cultural groups,  (and I say this with a heavy heart, as a child of Hip Hop).

Anyway, enough of what I think.  Here’s DaveyD interviewing Dr Jared Ball.

Word up!

The power of ‘citizen journalism’ as evidence for the protection of the citizen.

 

18 YEARS AGO

 

LAST WEDNESDAY

The multiple faces of Media Literacy

I attended the informative “Your Media, Your Tools” dissemination event at Leicester’s De Montfort University run by the Community Media Association (CMA) last Friday. It included a presentation by Ofcom talking about their media literacy agenda, as well as radio and video groups from across the UK showcasing the results of their involvement in CMA’s media literacy project.

It has always struck me just how slippery the term ‘media literacy’ is, with a different emphasis depending on the agenda of the person talking about it. I used to get frustrated by what I saw as a watering down of the notion, wanting the literacy aspect to acknowledged as the critical pedagogy that resides in community media activity, and that was me wearing my personal agenda on my sleeve. I now feel however it would be more useful to slow my judgement and analyse each different face of media literacy in its own right, as each interpretation of the term contains pragmatic, theoretical and/or ideological meaning for each different type of user, so that is worth looking at without undue dismissal.

In future articles I will be exploring the idea of media literacy in the nine predominant guises that I have seen it discussed within the community media sector, media education events, published research and academia. As with all identities of phenomena there is some overlap different contexts, though they will be analysed from the perspective of emphasis, and therefore argue that the identities described here are valid. Notions described in the future will be:

-  Media Literacy as media savvy
-  Media Literacy as semiotics
-  Media Literacy as creative activism
-  Media Literacy as cross-curricula engagement
-  Media Literacy as IT support
-  Media Literacy as media sector training
-  Media Literacy as process
-  Media Literacy as informed media consumption and media use

Interestingly, given this fractious identity, the actual definition of media literacy itself is, with slight variations, mostly settled in a broad consensus without too much debate. It is the interpretation of the accepted definition which is the cause of the majority of debate. Even though there is not one single definition, in loose terms it is widely acknowledged as being about;

- the right to have access to media platforms & tools;
- the need for people to be empowered to understand the media and its ever changing nuances;
- the ability to create media communications if so desired.

Some example of this are;

Ofcom’s definition is; “the ability to access, understand and create communications in a variety of contexts.” They acknowlegde they are mostly concerned with media literacy as applied to digital technology and that people should be able to use the equipment to get the most out of it. (Media Literacy as Media Savvy / Media Literacy as IT support).

According to The Media Literacy Task Force:
“If people are to participate fully at work or in their community, or communicate effectively with family, friends and colleagues globally, or consume media intelligently they need to be media savvy. They need to understand how media works and to feel comfortable questioning what they watch and read. They need a sense of who knows or owns what, and to what extent what you see is really what you get. And, very importantly, they need to become confident in using and exploiting the possibilities of new devices and media channels.”
(Media Literacy as Media Savvy / Media Literacy as informed media consumption and media use / Media Literacy as semiotics / Media Literacy as IT support)

The Center for Media Literacy‘s view is: the ability to communicate competently in all media forms as well as to access, understand, analyze, evaluate and participate with powerful images, words and sounds that make up our contemporary mass media culture. Indeed, we believe these skills of media literacy are essential for both children and adults as individuals and as citizens of a democratic society.
(Media Literacy as Media Savvy / Media Literacy as creative activism / Media Literacy as process)

At some point in the not-to-distant future I will expand on these ideas in a case by case basis in future blog articles, and also write this up as a full academic referenced paper.

Until then, thanks for popping by. Comments always welcome.

Shawn

Will the real Renaissance please stand up?

 

Culture Secretary James Purnell says in today’s Guardian (5 Jan 08);

“Community arts in many ways can be excellent in a different way from, say, the National Theatre. But what I wouldn’t say is, ‘We’ll tolerate average work because it happens to be in a particular location.”

In another part of the article the MP says, “If any part of our cultural sector is substandard, it’s not worth subsidising. Garbage in, garbage out.”

The article, by John Harris continues;

“He (Purnell) talks about ‘engagement with communities’ and the need ‘to spread the best culture around the whole country’. The (Sir Brian) McMaster review outlines the need for some big institutions – the Royal Ballet springs to mind -to get out more; the new idea, Purnell says, is ‘touring in a strategic way”.

The McMaster policy review’s official title is Supporting Excellence in the Arts and will be published by the government next week. Purnell is an enthusiastic advocate of the review telling the Guardian, “When Brian talks about the potential for a New Renaissance, I don’t think that is an overstatement. It’s exactly true.”

The idea of a renaissance in the arts is an in interesting one, but also problematic in the terms of how Purnell describes it. To dictate from the top-down the approach that the renaissance will take goes against the very nature of reactionary rebelliousness that lay at the heart of 15th Century Italian forerunner that Purnell and McMaster are prophesising. The heretic notions such as; the fact that the earth travels around the sun; the ‘right’ to publish and own personal Bibles translated into native languages other than Latin; and the realisation that the monarchy and clergy were not divine and citizens were equals with rights in society, were aspects of the anti-establishment feelings of the time that gave rise to the renaissance period. The leaders of the day were quick to captalise on the turning tides and cleverly appropriated renaissance ideas to suit their own ends in the tense relationships between church, state and nations, but the fact remains that the reformation spirit of the times were underground and punishable by death for treason and heresy.

Radical alternative media was at the centre of this spark for new thinking. As James Curran describes in ‘Communication, power and social order’ in Culture, Society and the Media (1988 – page 218);

“In a more general sense, the rise of the manuscript and subsequently of the printed book also fostered the development of an alternative culture. Although the bulk of scribal and early print output was in Latin and religious in content, the production and dissemination of vernacular texts helped to foster a parallel secular culture based on national languages and dialects, drawing upon indigenous cultural traditions.”

So, what is the refomation thinking in the UK today that this new Purnell/McMaster renaissance will follow? Well I would say that it will only come within a hair’s breadth of being a renaissance if it is led by the citizens not the leaders, and certainly broader than National Theatre and the Royal Ballet. It is all well and good for the financial gate-keepers of culture like James Purnell to say that ‘average’ and ‘substandard’ work will not be tolerated, as they want value for money. And I would also argue that cultural creative endevevours should be of a high standard to marry content with style, but as Purnell describes it is to see a renaissance as a glorified cultural tour, brining quality works to the people. As noble as that may, be, that is no renaissance, that is still a form of cultural imperialism.

A true renaissance cannot and will not be brokered by leaders or gatekeepers. It will be in places anarchic and in other places passivley (and maybe ignorantly) building on the shoulders
of those anarchic pioneers. At present the early (and I mean early!) signs of any new renaissance is in Web 2.0, in illigal counter-cultural activities such as graffiti, and also (of course) in the activities of the home bedroom music makers, film makers and other DIY producers of modern culural artefacts. Community & Independent media producers are the Galilleos and Martin Luthers to Mass Media’s Papacy, Emperors, and, ahem, Murdochs. But the 15th Century renaissance didn’t effect and influence the arts. It changed governments, influenced religions and shaped the cultural and moral values in the Western worlds. As idealist as we may be today, we still have a long way to go.

Are we actually in the midst of a new renaissance? It would be great if we were, but alas I guess I will never know as that surely is not the within the grasp of any of is to really know. We will be long gone and in a few centuries time it will be left to the historians of the day to define our ra for us. We are too close to recognise a renaissance if it came and gave us a lapdance! It’s also probably arrogant of us to even try define our endevevours in terms of refomations, renaissances, etc, but when people are passionate about what they do, what they believe in and the connection between the two, then, with feet firmly on the ground (like Galillio), it is good to think big.

I agree with James Purnell when he says, “Why shouldn’t we be that ambitious?”

Yes, as long as we are not attempting to shape others’ ambitions for them.

© Shawn Sobers 2007