Besides reality, perception matters – in terms of crime and security, not only actual crimes, but fear of crime. What informs our perception of the world – given that we can only possibly witness a fraction of it – is through the mass media. Until recently, that meant newspapers, which were a main source for radio and TV. While the influence of newspapers is much diminished, what newspapers say at least partly drives the new, social media. Mark Rowe looks at some newspaper editions of the Daily Mail from the new year, and how the Mail portrays private security and the police.
The Daily Mail, above all, remains successful; and for good reason. Its journalism is accomplished. ‘Eco extremists could turn into new terror threats, police warn’ was a page 30 headline in the Mail on Sunday (the Mail’s sister newspaper) on January 7. The 690-word article went over what few even in the private security industry would air; ‘the potential for radicalisation to extend to environmentalism given the ever-increasing sentiment within this lobby, and a sense of not being listened to by government’. The Mail was quoting a Met Police annual review, and anonymous ‘experts’ and a ‘security source’.
The print media has become only a shadow of what it was a generation ago; yet outwardly the Mail still has thick, perhaps 112-pages on a weekend, editions. That’s because as a product it satisfies its readership. It’s unafraid to run features running into thousands of words, such as on January 2, a vivid interview with murdered Essex MP Sir David Amess’ former aide Julie Cushion who ‘still finds her heart missing a few beats when a member of the public asks to use the lavatory at weekly constituency surgeries’, because the ‘fanatical terrorist’ murderer did that before stabbing the MP to death at Belfairs Methodist Church in Southend in 2021.
The success is not only because of the excellence of the product, but because the tone, style and content are a careful and consistent match to the readership. To be frank (a trait the Mail prides itself on) typical readers are getting on – a reason for the article about Sir David Amess is the carrying on of his work to fund a Dame Vera Lynn statue. Some of the columnists are, judging by their pictures, getting on also. A bellwether is the cartoons; some are positively old-fashioned, such as the Mac of December 31 that shows a policeman (it might be an prison warder or traditionally-uniformed security guard, but on the wall is a framed portrait of a bobby in his helmet) who’s sat watching the tv with hands behind head on the sofa, an opened can on an arm and newspaper with headline ‘Police failing on crime’ at this side. The man is oblivious to the ransacked room, a woman (presumably his wife) bound and on the floor (in her slippers) and a bald man with a sack of swag with one leg out of the half-open window. The joke is that police are blind to the real-world crime all around; except that the carton could date from the 1920s (if the box the man is facing was a radio, not a television set).
This pre-internet world – police gave up wearing collars and ties as shown in the cartoon, some while ago – is the one that the typical reader grew up in; readers are in late middle age, stereotypically middle-class and living in the ‘middle England’ shires. The Mail is how such readers pick up their world view and gossip – although the newspaper was giving half page notices to its Youtube column featuring two columnists, and one double-page feature analysed the phenomenon of thefts ‘in a leafy London suburb’ of Canada Goose expensive brand jackets or mobile phones (perhaps belonging to grandchildren of Mail readers?). This article was of particular interest to private security because it quotes Daniel Garnham, who’s set up the Security Industry Federation to represent security officers, or rather ‘security professionals nationwide’, ‘who worked as an officer with the British Transport Police for 20 years and has first-hand experience of investigating Canada Goose thefts’. Also quoted is the criminologist Prof David Wilson, partly about the market for such stolen, desirable clothing, ‘on virtually untraceable, resale websites such as Gumtree, eBay and Facebook Marketplace’.
Part of the Mail’s journalistic excellence, then, lies in being on the ball. The release in February of the anti-semitic incident statistics by the UK Jewish charity the Community Safety Trust? The Mail made it their front page lead, having already quoted the CST in an inside page article in the new year about how such hate crimes ‘jumped in the month following the outbreak of the Hamas-Israel conflict’.
It’s not only what you say, but how you say it, and the Mail excels because – while it makes much of its named columnists, journalists and celebrities (and the likes of former journalist and prime minister Boris Johnson) – it has a consistent ‘line’, in terms of politics and society. To explain briefly, in an editorial of December 30, the Mail said that ‘dishearteningly’, a Labour victory at the next general election looked ‘increasingly likely’. The editorial saw a way back for the Tories, if the party could ‘rediscover its purpose’. The editorial called on Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to ‘honour …. commitments’ from the 2019 election manifesto (‘of low taxes, controlled migration and delivering the benefits of Brexit’) and to ‘fulfil’ his five promises. Significantly, nowhere is crime mentioned among ‘positive reasons to vote Tory’ that the Mail urged for 2024.
What makes that omission of crime stranger is that crime is a staple of the news pages. The Mail on Sunday of January 7 harked back to its ‘end the shoplifting epidemic’ campaign, by telling the ‘you couldn’t make it up exclusive’ of (to quote the quite wordy headline – the Mail is not afraid to use large and long headlines) ‘Retired policeman fined for pursuing shoplifter in his car …. While thief gets off scot-free’ (a rare piece of laziness by the Mail – didn’t the thief just go free? Why bring scots into it?!).
The article featured (including a photo with him with crossed arms) Norman Brennan, retired police detective who since retiring has caught 29 shoplifters. He confronted a shoplifter in south-west London and recovered stolen goods; but while he was pursuing the thief in his car (‘unable to pursue him on foot because of arthritic knees’) he briefly drove down a one-way street the wrong way, and hence got a fine from the borough of Richmond (which refused his appeal). Here then was (in the Mail’s words) a ‘you couldn’t make it up’ story; but the oddity that the Mail didn’t point out was that a former career police officer was doing policing that the police aren’t doing. Mr Brennan noted that police ‘were in the middle of this’ (that is, at the mercy of others) if (as in this case) a retailer did not want to ‘pursue the matter further’. As Mr Brennan put it: “The criminal justice system is broken, not fit for purpose.”
The Mail, oddly for a newspaper with such a developed world view, and so quick to denounce, leaves it there; it’s a ‘mess’ (Mr Brennan’s word) and any ‘crackdown’ on crime (the use of the cliché is telling) doomed to fail. That can be the source of some future Mail article. Why is criminal justice in a mess? The Mail tells us there’s far more crime than there are police; prosecutors; and prison places. To remedy that presumably would require more of all, and a re-think of how much crime is around. Society would have to pay more in tax; yet the Mail is adamantly for ‘low taxes’. A contradiction.
Part two: the metaverse too.
