Evening Standard, Wednesday, 18 September 2002

Why journalists are wrong about crime

Most Britons think crime is rising, not declining. Not so. We are safer than ever. So why are we all scared?

by Nick Ross
Presenter of Crimewatch

Today the BBC will publish a survey which should shame sections of British journalism. It shows that as a nation we are paying an unnecessarily high price for crime. Most people seem convinced that crime in general is rising relentlessly when all the ways of measuring it show otherwise. It's not a minor misconception. On car crime for example people overestimate the chance of being victim by six-fold. It's not just property crime. They believe the very worst crimes are growing more rampant - for example, that children are much more likely to be abducted and murdered now than in the past. In fact in the year after Sarah Payne's murder a survey by the NSPCC could not find a single case of a child abducted and murdered by a stranger and, largely because of better social services, child murders in general have halved since the 1970s.

These are no mere abstract misapprehensions. As Peter Snow will report tonight, more than one in every eight people are trapped in their homes after dark because they dread becoming victims if they go into the streets. The elderly are the least likely to be targets of crime but have become the most fearful - they have been intimidated by propaganda and half-truths. And this in a country which should have all the wisdom of being served by more newspapers than any other, and a steady stream of broadcast news.

When politicians attack the media it's often because they're worried and looking for scapegoats, and David Blunkett's harangue last week, about the "all-knowing, less-understanding national press," was easily dismissed as the rantings of a minister on the defensive. But maybe he has a point.

Crime statistics are unreliable, and I'll return to this in a moment, but both main ways of measuring crime - police figures and victim surveys - agree that crime is falling, and has been for many years. Political opponents of whichever party is in power might like to believe otherwise so they have a stick with which to poke the prevailing government, but falling crime does not have much to do with party politics - the downward trend under Labour started under the Conservatives. It follows a similar pattern in the United States which transcended Democrat and Republican administrations.

One of the reasons for the drop, perhaps the main one, is that opportunities for crime are being cut. Vehicle security is one of the most obvious examples. Designers who were once reckless about crime are now making it more difficult for thieves and fraudsters, and even mobile phone companies have become alert to the need to make their products just a bit more crime resistant.

But some of the media remain stuck in a nineteenth century view of crime, a breathless penny dreadful litany of horror stories. Simplistic statistics - which any decently inquisitive journalist could demolish with a little basic research - are trotted out as though they were unquestionable fact.

In particular the Home Office figures traditionally used as a yardstick of crime are a feeble and capricious measure of whether crime is rising or declining. They are inflated or distorted by frequent changes in police procedures, definitions, or insurance rules. As David Blunkett pointed out, "The more you get crimes reported, the more crime goes up, the more I get slagged off." So why do journalists keep relying on police figures? Well, for one thing journalists are often lazy and like to keep things simple. For some the golden rule is never do that extra bit of research if it might knock down your story. If you don't come up with the simple, stark copy your editor wants then the editor might find someone else to send out in your place tomorrow.

There's another reason reporters are sometimes gullible about police statistics: journalism, like nature, deplores a vacuum and where there are no dependable facts journalists tend to grab whatever they can find. Police statistics may be as reliable as smoke and mirrors but they are broken down by borough and are regularly updated. The much more trustworthy alternatives, the studies which ask individuals about their actual experiences, only paint a national picture of crime are only published annually. But that doesn't help journalists who have deadlines measured in hours and minutes. So never mind scruples about whether everything that's said is strictly accurate, let alone placed in proper context, some cut corners much of the time. And if all crime figures point to an overall decline there is a temptation to single out any indicator that looks bad. Hence the current panic over street crime which has been allowed to corrode our confidence about crime in general. Or we ignore the figures altogether - anecdotal evidence is always compelling, and we can forever find horror stories of people who've been brutalised through crime.

So laziness, the need for immediate gratification, political bias - all these things can contribute to a climate of misreporting about crime. But another factor is what many people see as the curmudgeonly, gloomy, whingeing personality of so much journalism today. Proper scepticism is one thing, but few would deny that coverage of crime is steeped in a dismal view of life perpetuated by almost all the national press. This sneering disdain is so entrenched that when the newscaster Martyn Lewis pointed out the obvious - that there is too much bad news and not enough celebration of the good - he was ridiculed as being wet behind the ears.

Thus, as we've become safer somehow we've become more scared. The damage caused is now hard to undo. But tonight on BBC-1, when Peter Snow explains how much of crime has dropped, many people (including several newspaper editors) may find it difficult to accept. The belief that crime is rising, not declining, is too engrained.

Don't get me wrong. I am no apologist for criminals, nor for the government and nor am I remotely complacent about crime. Indeed, I have seen some of the worst of it, am outraged by the harm it does and devote much of my time and energy to tackling it. But crime is bad enough without stoking people's fears. We need to think how we report crime. It is beset by a curious anti-intellectualism that would never be countenanced in the coverage of politics or international affairs. There are some first-class crime correspondents, sometimes in unexpected places (The Sun has run some creditably balanced stories, for example) but at least one has conceded to me that, as a breed, they are not renowned for their sophistication. Surely the answer lies in their own hands.

Crime is important. It helps define how we live our daily lives. It sets the tone for our society. It deserves better. So do the readers, listeners and viewers who cower in fear.

© Nick Ross 2002