Reasons for stories about black young men and boys and
their place in the news agenda
There was a perhaps an unconscious admission that most stories involving
black young men or boys were crime related. One tabloid journalist stated,
‘As with most of our stories, it’s either reactive so it comes from something on
the news wire or it comes from a police press release.’ Getting such stories
from the police had inherent problems, as the radio presenter said,
‘journalists are perhaps over-reliant on stories coming from the police, to a
certain extent, because the stories come with a bias attached to it, which is
the police want a conviction and the journalists are helping them in that
respect’. A picture began to emerge which suggested journalists were not
actually ‘out there’ looking for stories – items were coming into news desks
almost fully formed. The reporter on the local newspaper said, ‘It’d either be
phone calls from the public, press releases from the police, stories involving
the police, stories about community groups or events, emails that are sent to
newsdesks, emails that are sent to me as a reporter.’ Most journalists were at
pains to emphasise, at the very outset of the interview, that they did not
identify ‘race’ as an issue in any story, ‘rightly or wrongly, if it’s a strong story,
then to me that’s the judgement that’s made and then the colour or ethnicity
or whatever of the individuals concerned is a secondary issue, an irrelevant
issue in a sense’. One broadcast journalist was particularly adamant, ‘There
is no such thing as, oh, it’s black we’ll do it. In fact that would never come into
it. It’s: is it a murder; is it a rape; is it a shooting? That said, there was
awareness from all respondents that crime and young black men had a
certain status within a news story, ‘It does feel to us that the easiest way for a
young black person to get into the papers is to pull out a gun and if he shoots
somebody or not, better still if he shoots several people or stabs somebody in
the heart or gets stabbed. Either you shoot or get shot, is the easiest way for
a young black person to get into the national newspaper’. Whilst there was
widespread denial that any of the journalists would treat a story differently
depending on colour, there did seem to be an ‘us and them’ mentality which
contradicted this, ‘Well, the problem is, is that we only go to black areas when
there’s been a crime. And that may be a question where one could actually
ask: why do we go? And we go because there’s been probably a major crime,
or there’s been a huge drug bust, or indeed a shooting and/or a murder or a
stabbing. You go to black areas when they happen. And there’s no judgement
on that. You go because of the weight of the crime; you do not go because of
the colour. The colour, in my experience, has never come into it and it never
would’.
Concerns about negative media images of black young
men and boys
All respondents were of the opinion that something needed to change, and
some were radical in their approach, ‘We have to put black editors, black
director-generals in charge of the BBC, black editors in charge of the
newspapers. That’s the only way. I’m sorry but it’s never going to happen.’
What was needed, respondents suggested, is a whole rethinking of the news
media, so that it reaches out from beyond its narrow ‘home counties’ base,
‘It’s a case of news editors and newspaper editors and section editors
thinking, we want to cover Britain as it is, not just as it appears from the
perspective of a home counties, white, public school Oxbridge educated
person… It’s about let’s have lots of black and Asian journalists and
reporters’. The regional newspaper journalist pointed to the need for
communities to be more involved in the news process, ‘I think it needs the
community or the people in black communities to have more interaction with
their local media or more interest, more cooperation… They can go to the
newspaper with positive stories, negative stories, appeal stories and we’ll
happily report them. But we can’t be everywhere at once, so we need to be
told about things. If there’s a positive story in an area that’s traditionally of
high crime, high drug problems etc, we will cover it - it’s just we need to know
about it.’ Most journalists spoke about balance and fact facing – yes, crime is
an issue in the black communities, but reportage of this needs to be
counterbalanced with focus on the various outreach work being done: ‘I don’t
have any apology for us focusing on those crimes sometimes, but it’s
important also in doing it that we hear from the parents of people, as we do I
think, who have been the victims of this crime; the efforts being made by
black people themselves in black communities to try and do more: Mothers
Against Guns for instance; Mothers Against Drugs. There are a lot of
organisations, which are working within communities trying to solve these
problems. So yeah we have a job to do that.’
In the final analysis, one of the print journalists, who is a feature writer for a
national daily, said that things had actually improved in terms of coverage –
but that there was still some way to go, ‘the gravity is moving, the world is
global, white power isn’t going to be white power any more, and you have to
be able to cover stories and penetrate communities and families and really
give that picture constantly, daily, all the time, not only when a crisis erupts. I
85think editors have to look at themselves but editors don’t. I’ve been moaning
about this for 25 years about the coverage and it’s got better. It’s got a whole
lot better. I really do believe it’s got a whole lot better but it’s too slow and
until the employment practices change, I think coverage will always be
inadequate.’
