Media Interpretation of the Crime - Essay Example

Media Response to Acts of Violent Children – Case of James Patrick Bulger Introduction The post-modern era has seen an increasing influence of the media in matters of public interest. While media coverage has advantages like spreading of news instantly, there are some disadvantages like biased reporting, loss of privacy, and possible influence of public opinion. This may be well understood by going through the history of media response to the murder of the two year old James Patrick Bulger in the year 1993. A brief study of the five-year-old Silje Redergard’s case, in Norway, is presented at the end as a contrast, to highlight the positive side of media non-interference. Background On February 12, 1993, James Bulger, who was taken to Bootle Strand Shopping Centre near Liverpool, England, by his mother Denise Bulger, strayed away from her side and was not found. She complained about her missing son, and later in the night the CCTV pictures revealed that the boy was last seen escorted out of the complex, by two young boys. Two days later, the mutilated body of James Bulger was found on the railway track near Walton police station. Jon Venables and Robert Thompson were taken into police custody and later tried in adult courts for the abduction and murder of James Bulger. The two boys aged ten were accused of murder, and were found guilty on 24 November 1993. The two ‘children’ were sentenced to custody until they were 18 years old, or adulthood, and later due to good conduct, were released on a lifelong licence in June 2001 (the guardian 3 March 2010). The Notion of the ‘Evil Child’ – Media Interpretation of the Crime Even though the two boys were technically children, their crimes were considered far above those committed by those in childhood years. The word ‘children’ encompasses all those who fall in the ages of 1-13/14 years. However, the experience of childhood differs from child to child, and is fragmented with all the stratifications of class, gender, ethnicity, location, mental health, and most importantly, poverty. People considered violent actions of children as stemming out of an unseen ‘evil’ seed, since by definition children are ‘innocent’ and can think no evil, see no evil, or do no evil. Thus, children who commit acts of violence are perceived as the avatar of evil or social malaise, especially when the violent acts are with the intent to kill other children (adapted from Stockton (2007, p.303). Young (1996) has noted that this case attracted unprecedented media and public attention and has “--inspired an enormous amount of public and private debate-- the students seemed entirely comfortable with the idea that the two boys were ‘evil’…” (p. 111). The violent acts of the ‘evil boys’ Venables and Thomson, on the visibly innocent child Bulger, led to the construction of ‘the child’ and ‘the non-child’ dichotomy as the underlying relationship between the victim and the perpetrators. Bulger was “the quintessential child: small, affectionate, trusting, dependant, vulnerable… baby…toddler” (Young 1996, p.114) as against 10 years old Venables and Thomson, who were the embodiment of evil and therefore, ‘non-child’; they were described as “little bastards” (Daily Star, 25 November 1993 cited in Young 1996, pp. 126-7). Gitta Sereny, the author of Cries Unheard: The Story of Mary Bell (1999), has disagreed with the notion of ‘the evil child’, "There is this belief that the evil person is evil, period. There's no rehabilitation, no redemption… "(Lyall 1998: p.1) Sereny (1998) has observed the power of the media in influencing the outcome of such sensitive childhood crimes within the British society, “Considering the amount of public interest cases such as this are bound to attract, there is a measure of hypocrisy in continuing to rely on the objectivity of juries or even of the courts.” (http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/s/sereny-cries.html) The Media Projection of Public Fears Two important public fears were visible in the media reports of the crime. One was the fear of the public for their own children, given that the crime had taken place in and around a populated shopping mall fully covered by modern electronic gadgets like CCTVs - 16 cameras (Young 1996, p. 128), “witnessed by 38 witnesses” (Young 1996, p. 112), security guards and in broad daylight. Thus the public were struck with horror and this particular case became an example, “symptomatic of social decay, decline of morality, the swelling of parents’ fears for their children…” (Young 1996, p. 113) The second fear was that of the common guilt suffered by the public as a whole, the society as a unit - that there were opportunities to avert the crime and yet, it was not averted. The western culture of respect for privacy and non-intervention of strangers on anything suspicious, prevented concrete action by the witnesses, despite sensing that things were amiss, when they saw a badly hurt James crying. The public were filled with a feeling of collective guilt on hearing of the disappearance of James Bulger, “I feel guilty even though I know I shouldn’t” (Observer, 28 November 1993 cited in Young, 1996, p. 131). Furthermore, the media as well as the public seem to have been carried away by a sheer sense of outrage and revenge, and have displayed total insensitivity to the age of Venables and Thompson. The need to punish appear to have outweighed any other reason or logic that the boys accused of murder, were also boys and thus could not be judged or equated to adults, as recounted by Young (1996, 125-131). The editorial of the guardian (2010) has remarked on the double game played by the media, “The tabloids are waving the principled banner of the public's right to know, but are trading speculative accounts of where Venables is, what he looks like – even what he is eating – while damning the government for "betraying James" by "silencing" details of Venables's latest misdoings”. (6 March 2010) Blame on Motherhood Another striking aspect of the media coverage of the Bulger murder has been the expectation of gendered role-play by mothers. In other words, mothers were expected to be care-givers to the children, and in turn, if the children display dysfunctional traits then, in some way the mothers were responsible, either by way of their genetic inheritance, or by way of bringing up the children (Young 1996). The same societal structures do not place the responsibility of child-rearing on the father, even though the double-role of being both the bread-winner and the care-giver may weigh too heavily on her. In the case of James Bulger murder too, it can be seen that the mother of the victim, Denise Bulger was looked upon with sympathy as she was perceived as a caring and attentive mother, who could not avoid leaving her toddler son alone, momentarily (Young 1996, p. 119). And, shopping malls are considered safe places for women and children. However, Ann Thompson - the mother of Robert Thompson was viewed unfavourably by the media, called as a “troublemaker” (Observer and the Daily Star cited by Young, 1996, p. 120), a drunkard who was never there for her son in his time of need (Young 1996, p. 124). “The excessive selfishness of Sue Venables’ love means that she does not love as a mother; she and Ann Thompson are alike in their abrogation of maternal duty” and these two “embody women as the Other” (Young 1996, pp. 124-5). The media has also been critical about the moral standing of ‘single mothers’ as generators of crime in the society. Rather than be understood and empathized with for the dual roles of mother the caregiver and mother the bread-winner, the figure of the single mother caught between two conflicting ideologies - woman as mother and woman as worker, has been painted negatively by the media. Stockton (2007) has stated that violent children coming from unhappy, poverty stricken, broken family backgrounds were more easily identified by the society, “alcoholic mother; roaming, gypsy childhood; first arrest at age eight; detention-home life,” (p.312) - very similar to Ann Thompson and Robert Thompson’s history. Ann Thompson has been typically portrayed as a woman given to drinking (Young 1996, p.121), and deserted by her husband of seventeen years for another women and a single mother incapable of monitoring her delinquent son. Young (1996) points out Sereny’s censure of Ann Thompson’s drinking, and how the father was “not incapable of providing a proper and stable family environment; the fault lies with their mother [Ann Thompson] with whom they were left…” (p.124).The guardian too cites the Daily Mail to point to the faults of the single-mother, "Ann Thompson was portrayed as an incompetent alcoholic…” (http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2000/nov/01/bulger.familyandrelationships The Positive Side of Muted Media Erwin James and Ian MacDougall have reported in the Guardian (20 March 2010), the case of the five-year-old Silje Redergard, who was beaten to death by two little boys in her own neighbourhood, in Trondheim, in the year 1994. The case is very similar to that of James Bulger murder; though Silje was older than James, the boys who beat her were only six years. The three children knew each other, even though their parents did not know each other, and the three were last seen playing together in the snow. Suddenly, the fun took a different turn and the boys punched, kicked and beat the girl and even stripped off her dress, allowing her to fall and lie there in the snow, ultimately to her end. Just like the murder of James Bulger, here too, the crime had been perpetrated by two small children on another ‘innocent’ child. However, in stark contrast to Britain, the response to the crime has been different in Norway. Instead of outrage, revenge and punishment seeking the Norway society sought reformation of the violent children. Beathe Redergard, the mother of the victim has said “Once we got to know that it was these little boys who'd done it, that lynch mob mood died down" and that she "felt bad" for the boys despite her own grief, simply because they were "just little kids" (James and MacDougall, 2010, p. 1).  Just like the Venables and Thompson, one of these two six-year olds too, had experienced a bad childhood of sexual abuse. However, the report notes, “Nobody said the boys were evil; neither were they branded criminal – and nor would they have been, even if they had been the same age as Thompson and Venables... In Norway, the age of criminal responsibility is 15” (James and MacDougall, 2010, p. 1). In sharp contrast to the public and media response in Britain, there was no demand for the names or pictures of the small boys who had killed. The reporting, too, was subdued. Instead of revenge, the society took positive steps to have the boys who had committed the act, transferred to another school in order to give them a chance to develop into normal, progressive human beings. While “information was disseminated quickly, and professional support was offered immediately” (James and MacDougall, 2010, p. 1), the parents of the victim too forgave the boys as they were merely children, even though they could not forgive the act itself. The boys have developed into young citizens who have been assimilated into the society in some way, without being branded as criminals by the public or the media. This case offers valuable lessons regarding the positive effects of muted media response to crimes. One can only ponder on how the Bulger case would have turned if Venables and Thompson too, were given a chance to heal, to reform, under the protection of anonymity, devoid the censure of the branding and labelling by the public and media. Conclusion Media has grown rapidly in the post-modern world. They have the power to spread news to all parts of the world immediately. However, this has its dark sides too. Especially in matters of criminal justice there tends to be abuse of media by media itself. The case of the murder of James Bulger and the media role in reporting the crime and debating the aspects of morality, childhood and crime, have offered an interesting study of the underlying dimensions of the case. It has brought to light how media interference can perpetrate distorted views in criminal justice. Furthermore, the brief study of Silje Redergard has also highlighted how media and the public can play a more responsible role in the reformation of juvenile delinquency, for children who display criminal tendencies are not evil, they are rather victims of evil themselves. Thus, they should be offered more empathy and opportunities to correct their actions, rather than be hounded by the media the public with vengeance and thirst for retribution. References Lyall, Sarah (1998) “Murder, She Wrote” in The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.fpp.co.uk/Legal/Observer/Sereny/OOFAge220898.html Sereny, Gitta (1999) Cries Unheard: The Story of Mary Bell (London: Macmillan, 1999). Stockton, Bond Kathryn (2007) “FEELING LIKE KILLING? - Queer Temporalities of Murderous Motives among Queer Children” in GLQ: A JOURNAL OF LESBIAN AND GAY Studies. Duke University Press pp.301-25. the guardian (1 November 2000) “Did bad parenting really turn these boys into killers? by Audrey Gillan. Retrieved from http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2000/nov/01/bulger.familyandrelationships the guardian (3 March 2010) “Tainted by the James Bulger legacy” by Helen McNutt. Retrieved from http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/mar/03/james-bulger-legacy-disturbed-children the guardian (6 March 2010) “Jon Venables: Rage without reason” Editorial. Retrieved from http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/mar/06/jon-venables-james-bulger-editorial the guardian (20 March 2010) “The Norway town that forgave and forgot its child killers” by Erwin James and Ian MacDougall. Retrieved from http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2010/mar/20/norway-town-forgave-child-killers Young, Alison (1996) “The Bulger Case and the Trauma of the Visible” in Imagining Crime: Textual Outlaws and Criminal Conversations (London: Sage, 1996): 11-145. ISBN: 0803986238 Read More