The Zohan

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/27012006/14...ing-soham.html

The other murders are terrible in their own rights but what happened to those two poor girls is one of the worse things in my living memery and was as far as i am concerened the biggest story in the uk at the time and with good reason!

This cop ran off at the mouth with ilttle thought and care for the parents or anyone else - fool has apologised and rightly so!

SJ_Skyline

Ian Bliar should resign.

- Publicly lobbying for 90 day detention without trial.
- Attempting to cover up the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes.
- His eye-watering political correctness is keeping at least one person I know from joining the Met despite having completed their course at hendon over 2 years ago.

... And now this.

The man is a complete fool!

drumsterphil

iTrader: (1)

The man should spend less time worrying about being a politician and more time worrying about his force's woeful performance.

He should resign immediately IMO and take his PC views off to never-neverland!

philc

he does seem completely insensitive and inept.

Soham made world headlines because of the age and innocence of the victims.

How can he not understand that?

He's only got to go back to the Moors murders in the '60's to know how the public re-act to child murders

unbelievable .....

... altho it was noted in this forum earlier about the total lack of the publicity for the lawyer that was recently murdered.

Just the murder of 2 kids compared to the murder of some bloke is not a race issue.

sociopath

So he should do too. If anything it is the opposite of what he says. The victim must be black in order to hit the headlines with "racial attack" etc etc

Shonen

Does anybody remember the MASSIVE media interest in Stephen Lawrence. It was a huge story at the time and is still refered to by the media all the time. Or the case of Damilola Taylor? It doesnt matter what colour the victim is, a young child being killed is going to make more of a story that a solicitor. There was a huge search for the girls so it was going to be a massive story.

What an incencitive idiot. He should resign.

Tiggs

he seems spot on to me.

"The other murders are terrible in their own rights but what happened to those two poor girls is one of the worse things in my living memery "

was it? why? i'm only 32 but can think of many equally nasty things to have happened to people.

The mistake he made is that the papers arent rasict....they just report stories that have greatest interest. This country is mostly white people....people like to hear about people their share something with, be it colour, nationaliy, etc .....so the papers will dwell on news about little white kids more than black kids in the same way they will mention the death of a UK person in France ahead of a French person in the UK. They just tell the news that interests the majority, simple.

Its no different to this forum posting up threads about Subaru crashes and not Ford Mondeos.....is it anti Ford? No, its just not of as great an interest.

The Zohan

Sadly i feel you miss the point and the point is two murdered young girls, this will always be big news irrespective of colour and so it should be, if you think different then you are deluding yourself!

List these crimes from your memory!, don't google or such just from your memory and i do i hope there are none equal or worse than two little girls abused then murdered then thier bodies burned to destroy the evidence!

Fur

lobbying for the 90 day terror rule was valid imo, you could never get too tough on these people

Re the murders, that was out of order

paulr

Completely sensible question to ask.
Why does the murder of a white person often get more headlines than that of an asian.

PG

Couldn't agree more !

Tiggs

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4541603.stm

how about that?

a discovery that followed the finding of the 5 year old who had been killed then had his head and arms cut off.....can you imagine little 5 year olds from Surrey or Ascot going missing only to pop up by Henley's rowing club floating down stream with no head.

to quote from Grishams A Time to Kill: "Can you see her? I want you to picture that little girl. Now imagine she's white. "

People react to news about people dependant on their own similarity to that person - doesnt matter if its Billoxi or Brighton.


(should add- cop was a fool to say it but thats not to say it not right....pity that saying the truth makes you a fool nowadays)

The Zohan

Let me spell it out for the hard of thinking

IT WAS TWO TEN YEAR OLD GIRLS ABDUCTED, ABUSED, MURDERED THEN THIER BODIES BURNED TO DESTROY THE EVIDENCE.
THEIR COLOUR OR RACE IS IRRELEVANT.
THE OTHER CRIME WAS TRAGIC BUT IT WAS A MAN NOT TWO TEN YEAR OLD GIRLS - DO YOU SEE A PATTERN EMERGING YET!!!

Do not bring race into everything, stop trying to win a PC gold medal for your efforts - it is not about race or colour.

A quote from the piece;
Dee Edwards, from campaign group Mothers Against Murder and Aggression, said: "It is always big news when a child goes missing and always should be."

The Zohan

Agreed, that is terrible, there have been two documentaries on this that i watched with interest to try and get a handle on what was happening. This got huge coverage in the press for some time and so rightly so. Like Soham it has died down after a period of time until something happens to trigger off press attention again.

Re Grisham a quote, from a fiction writer is not really apropriate just there for show and effect and reall irrelevant imho. The murder of children is one of, if not the worst things possible. It is not about the colur or race of the child!

Re the White chils/Henley comment - it does not warrrant a reply it is not about colour or race is it, if you feel it is then you are wrong imho!

I think most people react to this sort of news no matter their position or pursuasion. I have two young girls and this is pertinant to me but i do not feel more so than anyone else would.

It really is not a race or colour issue, if it is for you then it may be you have a problem.

paulr

Its the proprtionality though Paul.
There have been half a dozen really horrible murders in the last year,the tortured mother,the gang who filmed kicking a bloke to death,the murder of a whole family (something to do with drugs) yet none of these completely dominated the tv for months and months and months on end.

Tiggs

"Do not bring race into everything, stop trying to win a PC gold medal for your efforts "

quite the opposite.....i am more interested in Soham than i am in the African kid in the Thames. I am also more interested in a car crash in my street than i am in New Yprk, i care more about news of a UK hoilday maker dying in Oz than i do about 2 Australians dying in Oz.

People are interested in people like them.....its not racism, its human nature - if this country was 10% white it would be the reverse.

drumsterphil

iTrader: (1)

If you are referring to the recent media treatment of the lawyer and the asian guy killed trying to protect his car then I suspect the level of coverage had little to do with the race of each victim, more to do with the crime perpetrated - muggings are bad, car crime deemed less so.

The media is a business interested in numbers of papers sold and naturally they focus on what they think their readers want to read about (case in point, the level of coverage given to the deaths of George Best and Richard Burns).

Leslie

I agree with the post above. And also I think thet the colour of the people involved should not be considered when being reported.

That copper is a lefty fundamentalist PC idiot who is obsessed with his future career.

Les

Tiggs

"And also I think thet the colour of the people involved should not be considered when being reported."

then you are very naive. (if you tried to sell papers that way)

Abdabz

The apology was meaningless as he has written his script, proof read it, rehearsed it and delivered it. He obviously intended saying what he said... it wasnt a slip of the tongue...
Anyhoo to some extent he was right...The papers do pick and choose murders for headlines depending on various factors )which not being a journalist I find had to comprehend).
Damilola Taylor murdered in cold blood - all over the media for weeks - a potentially racially motivated murder in my home town recently of a white adolescent not even on the north west news
Lad in Huyton racially killed walking home with friends + all over the media, man killed by asians for asking them to stop being idiots on a bus in London the same day, page 17 of the same paper who had the huyton murder on the front page...
It insenses me how the media work this selection process based on their viewing / reading figures so therefor being concerned about what will touch the public most, as opposed to all lives being equally worth and so deserved of the same or fairly comparable coverage...
Mr Blair had a very very valid point, he just made the error of using an example we all remember by which to make it...The dunderhead...

unclebuck

The politically correct see racism in everything.

I'm also sick to death of bleating minorities playing the victim, not to mention the lefty liberal limp wristed dicks who love to fight their corner for them.

unclebuck

Unlike Damilola Taylor, Stephen Lawrence, and the black imported baby that was tortured to death, and the limbless african child corpse found floating in the Thames - all of which went on for *years* on end.

What cr*p you talk.

paulr

Evening Tweedle-Dee.

Tiggs

"The apology was meaningless "

no- he said he was sorry they were upset, but stood by his comments - because he's right.

unclebuck

Don't know why you're feeling so cocky.

After your performance over the last day or so you should be hanging your head in shame.

rr_ww

I cant say I read the entire piece. But what struck me was that maybe he was basing his comments on the media being ridiculous. Kind of Diana syndrome, where everyone has to feel like they personally knew the victim.

The media pander to that mindset far too much. 6 days of national mourning for 2 school kids Ive never head of, 2 months for some slag bag divorcee who didn't wear a seatbelt in a high speed car. 3 hours silence for the thames whale. More people observed the Tsunami silence than the Rememberence Silence.

The fella I saw on the news earlier was typical of falling into the trap. He referred to the Soham girls as if he knew them personally, and was actually their father. The only people that needed to demonstrate their emotional grief were the families and friends. Not just random people. Crying in the street.

People die EVERY day in this country. But the media only pick up on the stories that can get manipulated.

paulr

Excuse me?

Mr Scoob

Agree with Tiggs. In my view all lives are of equal value, the press hardly cover some murders but others are headline news for weeks. They seem to have a league table of which lives are worth more than others. This seems to be based mainly on gender and age rather than race. I'm sure that a 13 year old girl was also murdered around the time of the Soham murders but that recieved much less coverage. I guess that is because she was 3 years older so the press decided that her life was of less value.

Leslie

Tiggs,

Why shoot your mouth off when you just have not understood what I said. If you read the quote that you made from my post again and think about it, you may just realise that I made a statement that I believe in and not necessarily what actually happens!

Les

Hoppy

You lot are very naive. Newspapers are businesses pure and simple - they will publish whatever will sell the most papers. That is to say, whatever most people are most interested in.

Sure they can work it up a bit and spin it out, but if people don't buy it, they'll stop instantly and switch to something that they will buy. If you do not understand why the Soham murders got so much media attention (and there was a lot more to it than the death of two girls) then don't expect to become a newpaper editor any time soon

If you are unhappy with what the papers report, then the first place to look is to yourself - it is YOU that is buying them. Of course, that is not a literal statement, but like it or not, our newspapers are a direct reflection of society in the UK today. Scary, I know

Here are some newpaper circulations - the average daily sale for the last two months. Top six only:

Daily
The Sun 3,119,757
Mail 2,311,023
Mirror 1,678,997 (Record 438,652)
Telegraph 897,385
Express 800,403
Star 779,556


Sunday
News of the World 3,509,189
Mail on Sunday 2,215,765
Sunday Times 1,313,258
Sunday Mirror 1,513,323
People 886,235
Sunday Express 809,041

Where are the 'quality' papers then? Apart from the Telegraph and Sunday Times, outside the top six. The Independent for example, sells a mere 250,195.

These figures are from industry auditors, The ABC. If you like numbers, see here:

http://www.abc.org.uk/cgi-bin/gen5?r...=nav/abc&noc=y

Best regards,

Richard.

PS Want to guess what the biggest-selling magazines are? An equally depressing list of popular tat, I'm afraid. From memory, FHM is the biggest-selling monthly, and heat and Closer top the weekly best-sellers...

PPS Edited to add that recent events in magazine publishing have skewed the top-sellers list slightly from what I've quoted above. However, if you exclude subscriptions-only magazines and TV Listings mags, then the top-sellers list splits quite neatly into two massive sectors - the men's lads mags in the blue corner, and celebrity gossip mags for the ladies in the pink