Wronged people who then become untouchable

[Otta]

I was chatting about this over the weekend.

David Crompton (South Yorkshire's chief constable) has had to make a public apology for an email he sent (internally) about how his force should respond to the Hillsborough report last year.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-21586453

It's basically a reasonable email from an employee discussing how to handle a situation, and at no point does it suggest doing anything wrong, he states that they should stick to facts. The thing that has caused the upset is that he says "The Hillsborough Campaign for Justice will be doing their version... In fact, their version of certain events has become "the truth", even though it isn't".

Now that is basically true, but because the Hillsborough families have been the victims of such a cover up over the years, and because there are so many revelations that have now come out, they have basically become untouchable.

Equally I often hear people who have been the victims of hate crimes like racist attacks, or sexual crimes, on the radio as they have become campaigners against hate / sexual crimes. There are times when they talk absolute nonsense, but when challenged they will basically say that unless you've been there, your opinion is effectively trumped by theirs, even if theirs is a load of tosh.

Not entirely sure where I expect this thread to go, just thought it was an interesting conversation that I'd share.

Is it exclusive to this country? Are we so scared of offending, that we daren?t challenge those who have been the victims of crime or injustice?

[woodrot]

A good indicator is when someone uses a phrase along the lines of " ...well I dont know about that, all I know is..."

But again, without meaning to stir old memories or insult the dead, the Bulger issue and his Mother- repeatedly trotted out for statements and opinions that, mostly understandably, are unchallenged. Eerily similar to Keith Bennets mother ( victim of the moors murderer ), who until her dying day, was used as some kind of alternate voice by the popular press, even some 40 years on.

I can understand why they cannot forgive / forget, but there is a whole world of sloppy sensationalist journalism going on behind the scenes.

bludz

[Chillaxed]

Definitely think there's a reluctance to challenge the views of wronged people. I think it's because lazy observers put anyone challenging a victim's view in the other side's camp e.g. you're challenging Keith Bennett's Mum's view therefore you're on the side of Brady. This is simplistic but I think a factor. Then of course there's the understandable desire not to offend or rake up bad memories.

[Burbage]

I take the point. But if you've been lying, colluding, forging, perjuring, conspiring and orchestrating a wholesale cover-up (being the facts not under dispute), it might not be wise to bang on about the continuing reliability of a scant handful of arguable details immediately before the gruesome truth is published.

There is no law against it, though, so he's only had to get someone to write him an apology. The reason the IPCC took a dim view is because he effectively attempted a tactless PR campaign designed to skew the reporting of what turned out to be a very damning, and independent, report into a mire of mendacity that had denied justice for two decades solely to preserve the careers of some incompetent Plods whose negligence resulted in the deaths of the people they were being paid to safeguard. Trying it to spin it in advance doesn't just show insensitivity to the victims, it shows contempt for the independent process and disregard for the findings.

The IPCCs chief complaint is that the emails had "serious implications for public confidence", which they will have done. The police rely on public confidence, and appearing to refuse to take their medicine isn't likely to bolster it. If any PR work was needed, it was in preparing the fulsome apologies and the robust transparency that the inquiry called for, not in cavilling at details or playing at spin-doctors.

You may remember the Gulf oil spill in 2010 (well before Crompton's blunder), which was notable not just for the scale of the disaster, but the inept response of BP, who reckoned a bit of optimistic denial and finger-pointing at contractors would be just the thing to comfort the families of the dead and soothe a worried public. It didn't work out too well for BP, and to find a senior Plod trying the same tactics shows a spectacular lack of common sense and a monumental failure of judgement which, if nothing else, raises the very good question of what qualities his juniors must have had to be passed over for the job.

[DaveR]

At the risk of being a bit pseudy, the way the media treat victims exposes the difficulty of using objectivity as the key driver for ethical journalism. Objectivity is usually understood to mean neutrality i.e. not taking a position between competing versions of events. However, where there is only one version, and it is asserted very strongly and with the authority and moral force of coming from a victim, neutrality will mean (in practice) simply presenting that version without challenge.

Another view of objectivity is that it involves testing any version of events against the objective truth (or the closest to it that can be identified). In the case of victims of sex crimes (for example) that would make for pretty uncomfortable media interviews:

"So Miss X, even though you were raped, the evidence doesn't suggest that the change in the law you are campaigning for is really justified. In fact your personal experience pretty much disqualifies you from making a rational assessment on the issue. What do you have to say to that?"

[Otta]

Burbage, I didn't really read what he was doing in the same way as you. I just think they knew what was going to come out more or less, and they also knew that the press wouold have no option but to (rightly) condemn them, so he wanted to limit damage.

Police officers at that level are not plods, they are managers. He was trying to do the best for his "company".

Don't get me wrong, I'm not taking his side, but equally I don't think it really deserved such a rsponse. The thing that was condemned was not what he suggested doing, but the fact he'd said that the Hillsborough campaign could say whatever, and it would be accepted without question.

Woodrot's post puts it all quite well for me.

[Burbage]

I'm afraid I see it very differently. What's "best" for his outfit should be what's best for the public he's supposed to serve, and futile attempts to get the force painted as better than it should be would only be in the public's interest in a place like North Korea. Here, they're just at the public's expense, and if he can't understand that, he shouldn't be in public service.

By the time of the email, remember, the force will have been through the bulk of the inquiry, and done the bit about moving on and learning lesson and whatever other platitudinous guff can be found in the Chief Constable's Handbook. It was doing it's best to pretend to be open and humble and transparent and diligent and reformed after a twenty-year reign of "owning" the "truth" on its own terms and in the most insensitive way possible. Yet here it was again, with a Chief Constable, the person charged with leading his brutish pack out of moral turpitude into the sunlit uplands of approximate lawfulness, playing at spin-doctors and complaining people weren't being fair? A mild rebuke from the IPCC seems not only entirely justified, but the very best he could possibly hope for.

On the matter of the victims, the media are being coy for a different reason. It's not that the Press has suddenly developed an indifference to trampling on people's sensitivities, but that the Hillsborough families, as News International found to their cost, have learnt to work the libel courts. Plod can say what it likes, but even the tabloids won't buy their toxic tales any more.

[Otta]

"Here, they're just at the public's expense, and if he can't understand that, he shouldn't be in public service. "

A public service yes, but all public services are run like private companies these days. It's crap, but that's the model they're in to. He was attempting some damage limitation, in most public services his bosses would be pleased with that.

I don't want to get hung up on him though, the thread is about whether victims, or "wronged" people basically then get a free reign in the press, because no one wants to be seen as questioning them, for fear of being labelled insensitive.

Forget Hillsborough, it's too unique and messed up to be a good example, I should have thought of that.

[woodrot]

not exactly a wronged person, but speaking anything but utter adoration for miserrable scotch preoxided ex-warbler Annie Lennox often results in a look that you only see when someone treads a ripe fox egg into their white axminster. I have no axe to grind with this talentless scotch buddist, but what has she actually done in the past, say 20 years that has elevated her to this kind of saintly status ?

innit

[Atticus]

I find the Israel/ Palestine debate to be an example on this, from both sides, I should add.

[Otta]

Absolutely Atticus!

[Burbage]

Otta Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> ..... the

> thread is about whether victims, or "wronged"

> people basically then get a free reign in the

> press, because no one wants to be seen as

> questioning them, for fear of being labelled

> insensitive.

I still reckon the answer's no. Not in a world that continues to admit the existence of the Daily Mail. If you mean that some pressure groups get a very easy ride in some parts of the press, then that's true. And if you mean that, on an approximately daily basis, governments, corporations and other ornaments of the establishment are in the habit of losing their spokesperson whenever anything awkard turns up, then that's true as well. But there's a big difference between routine arse-covering and the fear of being labelled.

At present, the coincidental collapse of a catalogue of cover-ups has meant that lots of wronged people are getting lots of airtime and are not being challenged. But that's because they've been proven to have been wronged (or cannot be proven not to have been), so there is no other side to put. Not without being sued.