Wilby on Birmingham Arrests Coverage

Peter Wilby writing in the Guardian gives a damning indicement of last week's press coverage of the Birmingham arrests.

http://media.guardian.co.uk/mediaguardian/story/0,,2005771,00.html

"The biggest press scandal of our time is not intrusion on royal privacy - which has just led to a reporter's imprisonment - but the newspapers' consistent and brazen disregard for the contempt laws. "

Quoting the various headlines and speculation in the Press he reminds us

Under the sub judice laws, journalists are supposed, from the moment of arrest, to confine themselves to the barest details and to avoid publishing material which might prejudice a jury if the case came to trial. Judge for yourself whether the coverage fell within the laws.

And even the use of the word"alleged" was hardly put to its best use

The papers dutifully scattered "alleged" through their stories but, the morning after the raids, neither the Express nor the Sun managed to get the word on their front pages. Indeed, the Sun criticised BBC news for noting that "the intelligence services often get it wrong". "Just whose side are these guys on?" the paper demanded.

He makes the point that

we should accept that, in the age of 24-hour news and the internet, nobody can stop the circulation of speculative details about high-profile alleged crimes.

But gives the following reasons why this should not be the case.

1.printed newspapers, to say nothing of the police, still carry far more authority than tittle-tattle on the internet.

2.if we are so concerned about the privacy of the royals and other celebrities who live in the public eye and often welcome publicity, why are we not equally concerned about the privacy of previously obscure men who may well prove innocent?

3.we should consider the effect on Muslim neighbourhoods. Large numbers of brown faces rarely appear in the papers except in the context of anti-terrorism operations. Whether or not they have anything to do with terrorism or with the suspects, they are invariably shown in a negative light.