by Benjamin Wells
At the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) Annual Delegate Meeting (ADM) last weekend the issue of how the press report accusation in the media was discussed at two different fringe meetings over the course of the conference.
A question of balance
The main concern expressed was that far too often major coverage is given to the arrest or conviction of suspected criminals, but if they are released without charge or acquitted all too often there is little or no coverage in the media.
Covering terrorism
This is a problem particularly prevalent when reporting on terrorism, and the Ethics Council launched their guidelines on covering terrorism at a fringe meeting this week to advise journalists in order to promote balanced coverage.
One of the members of the Ethics Council chairing the ‘Covering Terrorism’ meeting made comparisons with men wrongly accused of rape and other sexual offences whose lives are ruined by the accusations made against them even once found to be innocent they are still treated with suspicion.
Concern over the balance of coverage when reporting terrorism was echoed in the ‘Media Against the War’ fringe meeting on Saturday in which the ‘war on terror’ was described often as a ‘war of terror’ in Britain.
Nahella Ashraf, Chair of Manchester Stop the War expressed concern that as a result of unfair coverage, members of the Muslim community that are arrested are often treated with suspicion and fear when they return to their communities having been released or acquitted.
Shaykh Asif Hussain Farooqui
A case in point clearly highlighting the problem is the recent arrest of five suspected terrorists in Manchester including a 62-year-old Muslim preacher.
The arrests received major coverage by news sites such as The Telegraph, with the fact of his arrest in particular included in the stand first. By contrast the release of the preacher without charge received very limited coverage with only one line in a less prominent article (see articles linked below).
Possibility for changeThis imbalance between the reporting of arrests and releases is, some may well argue, inevitable as editors will, more often than not, run with the sensationalist headlines that sell papers and generate hits, but as was argued at the ADM it is their duty to do more to balance this.
Given Home Office figures in 2007 showing that more than half of those arrested in terrorist investigations are later released, some may call for the NUJ to commission a report into the proportion of coverage given to those found innocent of crimes and what can be done to promote fairer reporting.
Links
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Telegraph Report: Raids on suspected terrorist recruitment network
