On the morning of January 26, Sir Ian reported back to his police authority on the state of crime in the Metropolis one year after his appointment
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the MPS ensured a ‘proportionate response’, the Commissioner answered (statement available from MPA website: www.mpa.gov.uk ).
I am pretty furious. We do devote the same level of resources to murders in relation to their difficulty. It is not about our resources or our intent. Every single life is equally important. What the difference is, is how these are reported. I actually believe that the media is guilty of institutional racism in the way they report deaths. That death of the young lawyer was terrible, but an Asian man was dragged to his death, a woman was chopped up in Lewisham, a chap shot in the head in a Trident murder – they got a paragraph on page 97. With one or two exceptions, clearly Damiola Taylor was one, the reporting of murder in ethnic minority communities appears not to interest the mainstream media.
Blair said the MPS was obliged to respond to news media interest in murder cases. He further illustrated his frustrations with news media selectivity using the following example:
If you look at the murders in Soham, almost nobody can understand why that dreadful story became the biggest story in Britain. Let’s be absolutely straight. It was a dreadful crime, nobody is suggesting anything else. But there are dreadful crimes which do not become the greatest story in Britain. Soham did for that August [2002] period become the greatest story.
After the MPA meeting, Blair told journalists: ‘There are lots of murders of people that do not get that kind of coverage; sometimes they do, sometimes they just don’t. Putting it bluntly, it is a quiet news day. It’s August; these things can blow up.’ Blair’s press officer cautioned that his unguarded ‘on the record’ remarks might be a problem (Blair, 2009), and Scotland Yard issued a clarifying statement later that afternoon which stressed the Commissioner’s full awareness that the Soham murders were ‘appalling’. But Blair’s media critics were already writing the headlines: another race row was about to envelop Scotland Yard.
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There were at least two possible stories, both of which related to the news values of the press when reporting murder. First, was Blair factually correct in his assertion that ethnic minority murder victims were less newsworthy than white murder victims? Secondly, why had the Soham murder case been deemed so extraordinarily newsworthy? In both instances, Blair seemed determined to pick a fight with the news media. The response was immediate: the Commissioner’s comments and the news media’s reactions circulated rapidly across the online and traditional news media. This, we would argue, was the beginning of the decisive stage in Sir Ian Blair’s ‘trial by media’. The Charge: The ‘Soham Slur’ Although both stories featured heavily across all sections of the news media, it was Blair’s ‘Soham slur’ that dominated. A deluge of front-page splashes, inside news stories, leading articles, editorials and commentary pieces debated, but mostly condemned, the ‘incendiary’ comments of an ‘unhinged’ police Commissioner who could not understand why the Soham murders had become a global news story. Blair found himself juxtaposed with the iconic colour photograph of Holly and Jessica, summary reminders of how they had died, and outraged comments from a variety of victims groups. The running sub-commentary was that Blair needed to either substantiate his allegations or apologise:
‘Cop: Holly & Jessica Why All The Fuss?’ (Daily Star, 27 th January, 2006: 12) ‘Met Chief: Why all the fuss about Soham?’ (Daily Telegraph, 27 th January, 2006 : 1) ‘Why All The Fuss Over Soham, Asks Police Chief; As he accuses media of institutional racism, an astonishing statement from the Met boss’ (Daily Mail, 27 th January, 2006: 1) ‘Has Britain's Top Copper Lost His Grip On Reality? Leader’ (Daily Express, Leading Article, 27 th January, 2006: 10) ‘Why Was Soham Such A Big Story?; Asks Britain's Top Cop’ (Daily Mirror, 27 th
January, 2006: 17) 17
‘Soham slur: the Sun Says’ (Sun, Leading Article, 27 th January, 2006: 6) ‘Why did Soham get so much attention?, asks Britain's top policeman’ (Times, 27 th January, 2006: 1)
An instinctive defensiveness obliged some level of press engagement with Blair’s ‘institutionally racist news media’ pronouncement. Print and broadcast news editors explicitly rejected the accusation, claiming it represented a serious error of judgement. The Daily Mail, Daily Express and London Evening Standard reproduced previous front pages reporting the murders of black and ethnic minority teenagers to prove that they gave coverage to victims of all backgrounds. There was general press acceptance that crime reporting is (necessarily) selective. Nevertheless, Blair was condemned for failing to produce any evidence to support his claims about the primacy of race. It was only the liberal Independent and Guardian that featured Blair’s ‘institutional racism’ remarks as their primary news story:
‘Met chief labels media institutionally racist’ (Guardian, 27 th January, 2006: 7) ‘Met chief accuses media of 'racism' over murder cases’ (Independent, 27 th
January, 2006: 4)
And even here there was an insistence that race, whilst important, was only one factor in determining the newsworthiness of a particular murder story. Both broadsheets were deliberate in distancing themselves from Blair’s ‘misguided’ Soham comments.
On the morning of 27 th January, Blair appeared on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme to further clarify his position and, it seemed, to try and re-gain control of the news agenda. The Commissioner was asked if he believed ‘if those two little girls, Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, had been black, it wouldn’t have been picked up in the same way?’. He said he did not believe that, but remained resolute that the news media are institutionally racist. Blair conceded, ‘the last thing I need is a war with the
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