Woolwich murder: did broadcasters go too far?
ITV has received more than 400 complaints about its coverage of the brutal murder of soldier Lee Rigby in Woolwich on Wednesday, which included a disturbing film of one of the bloodied suspects speaking into a witness's phone camera. Douglas Chalmers, a media ethics lecturer at Glasgow Caledonian University, questions whether broadcasters got it right.
ITV broadcast footage of one of the suspects speaking to camera
The distressing events surrounding the brutal murder of Drummer Lee Rigby have brought to the fore the question of how much airtime should be given to fanatics to expose why they carried out their brutal actions.
Within hours of the murder on Wednesday, viewers of the main news bulletins were able to see and hear one of the alleged perpetrators, bloodied cleaver and knife in hand, declare why he had committed this brutal offence.
“You people will never be safe, remove your governments – they don’t care about you,” claimed one of the assailants, a theme he developed in some detail.
Later that evening I saw what seemed quite an amateurish attempt by reporter Cathy Newman to interview radical cleric Anjem Choudary, former leader of the banned group Al Muhajiroun, on Channel 4 News, where she put it to him that since Choudary had ‘helped radicalise’ one of the perpetrators then he should apologise for what had happened in Woolwich.
The ensuing argument did little more than show how entrenched views are in this area of debate. Despite other panel members such as Julie Siddiqi of the Islamic Society aiming to put a more balanced view into the news item, it was in my view a waste of valuable space to attempt a confrontational approach live on television to discuss this tragic event. This was never likely to lead to any type of breakthrough in understanding.
Later on the same channel, masked extremists from the far right English Defence League were shown, demonstrating against what they called ‘political’ Islam and given airtime to claim ‘enough is enough.’
While other more representative, and calmer voices, such as The Muslim Council of Great Britain, condemned the attack on the soldier, saying it would no doubt heighten tensions on the streets of Great Britain, this was not given headline treatment.
So the question remains: when a tragedy like this happens, what is the responsibility of the broadcaster?
First of all it needs to be acknowledged that all news coverage is inevitably ‘framed’ by the broadcaster. Even live footage cannot be seen as ‘neutral’ as the choice of what to shoot and broadcast has been made by the camera crew (or increasingly the citizen journalist), with the decision on whether to broadcast or not then taken under editorial guidance.
Secondly, the editorial decision needs to take into account the likely impact of such broadcasts. It has long been assumed that broadcasts by extremists of the far right, against immigration for instance, have served to incite racial hatred against minorities. Similarly, giving airtime to fanatics such as the alleged killer of Drummer Rigby, and to extremists such as Choudary and to the far right English Defence League, can only help polarise the situation, and inflame it further.
In short I believe the broadcasters were wrong to go for a sensationalised approach to this horrible and tragic event. Covering it as they did only helps exacerbate this terrible situation, rather than taking real long term steps to try to eliminate it altogether.