Podcast 16 (24.17)

The podcast discusses the media's representation of crimes, focusing on two cases: the Croydon stabbing and the Zahra Alina murder. The hosts and experts analyze how the media portrays these crimes, highlighting the use of violence and graphic imagery to attract readers and viewers. They discuss the concept of newsworthiness, which includes elements such as risk, violence, proximity, and children. They also mention the personalization and dramatization of crime stories. The hosts express their sadness and concern over the media's focus on violent and tragic events, noting the impact it has on society. They question the ethics of exploiting these cases for profit and emphasize the importance of considering the victims and their families. Hi guys and welcome back to the Crime Stories podcast. Today you're joined by your hosts me Kate McAllister and Madge Wahodum and we're joined by our experts as well Madeline Robertson and Sasha Broban. So today we're going to be discussing media's representation of crimes and we're going to be talking about how the media depicts these crimes and the effect that the media has on society and the two cases we're going to be focusing on are the Croydon stabbing which happened not long ago in September this year and then we're going to go on to discuss the Zahra Alina case which happened in 2022 but is still ongoing in the news at the minute and she was murdered after a night out. So to begin I'm going to hand over to your other host Naj. Madeline can you walk us through what happened on September 27th? So this is a very devastating case which happened on September the 27th 2023 at a bus stop just outside of Whitgrift shopping centre on Wellesley Road in Croydon South London. Eliane Undam was a 15 year old female who was sadly stabbed to death during rush hour in the morning of her school day. For legal reasons her attacker cannot be named however the information we have on him was that he is one he's a male two he was 17 years old which I actually believe is a really heartbreaking part of the case and within the media it has been widely spoken about making its way onto headline news of multiple media platforms such as the Guardian, Daily Mail, The Mirror, Sky News, BBC and even the New York Post. The Sky News article is one which I'm going to use to draw out information upon this. The title of the article is girl 15 stabbed to death on way to school a teenage boy is arrested. Within this case we can see the key ideas and themes I would like to go into from this headline which is one the girl is described as a school girl, two the girl was repeatedly stabbed outside of a bus after attacker produced a knife from his pocket in dispute over a bag. The boy stabbed the girl in the neck with a knife multiple times. These all link to Yvonne Duke's idea of newsworthiness which is discussed later on. I did just want to give a mention to a victim statement which was stated on Sky News article where a bystander described the scene as blood was coming like water everyone was screaming. This creates a very vivid and gory imagery which again links to Yvonne Duke's newsworthiness idea to be discussed momentarily. Stephen Chilborn is a criminologist who Yvonne Duke's built their idea of newsworthiness upon. Naj, can you just give us the lowdown of what newsworthiness is? Duke identifies seven key imperatives which makes crime story newsworthy. For example these are risk, sex, celebrity and high status person, proximity, violence, spectacle or graphic images and children. This story does hit a lot of the point where Duke is saying however definitely brings the point of his violence, spectacle and violent imagery and involving children and proximity. Adeline could you please tell us how this links back to the Andom case? So the idea of it being a very mundane task which everyone must do and which every child must do and what every parent must allow their child to do makes us feel very unsafe about the situation and especially the idea of heading off to school. The idea of violence in this case can be seen through this as a senseless act as described by a witness on the scene. The reason this was reported on so heavily in the media is because it does in fact hit four of the elements which Naj just said. It interestingly draws on readership and viewing creating popularity for the newspaper slash newspaper outlets. So this could be seen as a very selfish reason especially since the demographic is so young. The headlines do include her specific ages, activity and what is happening during the case. Kate can you give us your opinion on the violence of this case? I think it's really sad. Like you said about the person going to school, I just think it's really shocking and I do think the media is like picking up on the violence of it especially when you read that witness statement. I just think that stuff doesn't necessarily need to be put out in the media. Like they're definitely picking up on it being a spectacle which you've said is one of Ogonjuk's newsworthiness points. It's definitely a spectacle. The stabbing like the description of it is very violent and you can tell that the media is kind of picking up on that to sell stories realistically. I just think the graphic nature of it is such a shock factor especially when it involves children. The fact that parents are then having this fear installed in their minds just about their kids walking to school by themselves. This shouldn't be the way our society should be able to live which again brings in proximity which is one of Ogonjuk's ideas. Again like I said the violent imagery and the graphic imagery that is being portrayed in the media by her being stabbed to death. Something about this was very inappropriate but it is the news and that is kind of what they're going to do which I guess is kind of weird you could say. It's a bit like morbid curiosity I suppose because people enjoy reading this stuff. They wouldn't put it out if it didn't sell but we all think that it's wrong and yet it's interesting. It's the normalization of it as well like the fact that we can't really log on to the news and not hear of something so devastating and gory and like this is what's making the headlines. It's nothing happy nowadays. It's something so devastating and so young. You know what to expect when you're watching the news and we watch it anyway so obviously people do find this interesting. It's selling. It's number one news story. It was the days I was reading about this when it happened and I was shocked and I read up on the case multiple times afterwards as it was happening so I was invested in it as a reader which is why they use these like shock factor values and things to draw the reader in and it works. It's as if it's a book. It's as if like because we don't know them we have such a connection with them. It's heartbreaking for the family and my thoughts and prayers do go out to them but it's just crazy that the news can pick up on such a case and have it such widespread. And there's so many of these sorts of cases but they pick up on these specific cases. I mean they picked up on it because it's a child. They picked up on it because it's a spectacle and it's unfortunate because other people don't get this like victim status that's portrayed in this particular case. Exactly which I think is a really good idea put forward by Yvonne Dukes who did actually build her idea off of Steve Chibnall. Naj, can you just give us a lowdown of what Steve Chibnall said about newsworthiness? Chibnall introduces the idea of newsworthiness. He written the relationship between the police and the news media. He mainly focuses on the newsworthiness of crime and how it's influenced by the police and the news. He had imperatives didn't he? So those imperatives were I believe personalisation and dramatisation and that's definitely picked up on this case. There was more but they're not quite so relevant here. 100%. So with linking these two imperatives to the Eliane Andan case we can see that it is a very dramatic case which can be shown through Sky News providing a witness statement describing what a young the young girl's best friend cried when the attack was happening which was is my friend dead that's my best friend. Regarding Chibnall's idea this is evidently a link to dramatisation as the inclusion of this heightens the public shock of the scene in a way which I believe by describing the best friend's word makes the scene somewhat chaotic and fast. It is like what you said earlier it's like a fictional book they are literally making it into a drama. Yeah they're using all of these words to make a narrative. So Sky News also used the victim's family for a statement which links to Chibnall's idea of personalisation as in society we do all have families. We all have a close bond with other people which makes the use of these statements in this case hit really close to home for a lot of people. The use of the family as a focal point of pain of the attack can be highlighted in part of the article where Sky News describes the family as being devastated. This links to personalisation of the case especially when in the article they also highlight a victim's statement of it's someone's daughter. I mean how many of these stories do you see they mention the family that's someone's daughter that's someone's mother that's it's always used in these stories. It's meant to make you conscious of what you have and how it is personal to you as well. And it's also the press wording and the delivery of it like the screams on the case is like an evidently a good way for them to get a catchy headline which again could be considered that as quite a selfish reason to have marketing. It's picking on people's like own personal relationships. Yeah and it's a very like emotive language which again for dramatisation is the fundamental elements of like a drama like a soap opera title it's always emotive language which again this story's headline we can see that. I think a lot of what you've mentioned in your case is definitely highlighted in our case as well. Yeah so we're going to be talking about Zara Alina who was a 35 year old woman who was murdered in London in June 2022. Although this didn't happen this year there's still news reports on it now. I mean last week there was headlines in the news about her murderer not turning up to the trial for example. So it's still a very open case. I mean it's very much an open case. He's been charged but he's still being used in headlines and the story was sensationalised at the time and still but I'm going to hand over to Sasha who's our expert on this one. So could you please describe what happened? Zara Alina was a 35 year old woman who was sexually assaulted and murdered late at night by her attacker 29 year old Jordan McSweeney in East London. So her killer had actually previously been convicted of multiple similar offences and had only actually finished serving his most recent sentence nine days prior to the attack. So he's currently aiming to appeal his minimum sentence of 38 years for Alina's murder hence why it's so relevant today. I mean it's been reported on by both broadsheets and tabloid newspapers. So particularly in the BBC I think just in the past couple of weeks we've seen a couple of headlines come out from the BBC but also from places such as The Sun and The Mail Online. Yeah I think I saw one in the When researching this case we found out that Nils Christy's theory of the ideal victim is super relevant here. So the idea of the ideal victim is as Nils Christy described it someone who is physically weaker and unrelated to the perpetrator and in a way that they can hold no blame for their victimhood. So Zara Alina fits the idea of the ideal victim here. She's a woman so seen well technically as physically weaker as well and she has absolutely no relation to Jordan Sweeney who I mean at that night I'm not sure if anyone's seen like the video footage of what happened but he was literally walking around searching for someone to read. She was completely unrelated to him and she was simply walking back home from a night out so it's an innocent activity. It's this idea of victim status. Yeah. As the ideal victim she has this higher victim status and hence why it's been reported on because she's the ideal victim. Which really links to our case because Eliane she was a child she was a girl she fit the ideal victim status like her innocence is emphasised a lot in the papers. That's so interesting because in fact even though Zara Alina was a 35 year old woman so couldn't be seen as a child or anything like that the way that she's described in the papers is very much childlike or she's a very it was it was the idea that she was so innocent and so you know that that that that is the only reason why she wasn't deserving of something like this to happen to her. It was that the media felt the need to express that she is the ideal victim whereas with other cases we've seen previous to this because they you know may potentially like promiscuous women. I mean Nails Christy talks about the real rape victim in one of his books and I think that she is that real rape victim. I mean it's the idea of her walking home from night doing a innocent task and she was on a night out that was an innocent task. She was causing no one any harm. It's also the idea of them both being like a damsel in distress which I think the media plays on a lot to be fair especially in like tv and stuff we can kind of see like I guess you could say like a male-centered perspective in the media really. I know that Kelly Oliver she actually said about how the male gaze is more relevant and more dangerous than ever describes how a male-centered perspective in the media and around films especially like this could be seen as allowing younger generations to kind of feel and internalize that boys have kind of an upper status which again in the patriarchal society that arguably we live in is this kind of empowering that and is that really backing up the idea of the patriarchy and the idea that young boys are allowed to see themselves as better than women. Is that kind of allowing for these cases to carry on and to continue? Well I think it's definitely true that the media certainly pays more attention to victims who can be termed the ideal victim so exactly people such as Zaralina but actually when we looked at the official rape statistics of England and Wales we found that six and seven rapes against women happen against happen by someone that they know um so and and none of us would think that obviously because we've seen these sort of things in the media. The real rape victim according to Nils Christie is someone that doesn't know her perpetrator. Is that we're seeing a statistic that doesn't level up with what people are saying? We could certainly argue and I think Nils Christie as well would argue that the purpose of doing things like this is for a method of social control and so providing more media coverage of ideal victims it aims to other certain groups of people who don't align with these existing hegemonic ideals within society. So as I was saying earlier a good example of this is like a promiscuous woman who doesn't align with traditional women traditional ideals of women being innocent and subservient to like one particular man. So in our research we actually found an article from the Mirror which um it was from 2014 but I just thought it was just such a perfect example of how um the media aims to other different types of women. Yeah. So it's titled jealous husband kills promiscuous muslim bride after she had birthday sex with another man um I mean in itself that title is already using progressive language. Yeah. It's taking away her victimhood. It's like putting a blame on her in a sense. Exactly just because she doesn't fit in with what you know the media terms the ideal victim. Yeah. So obviously the fact that she's literally called promiscuous in the title and you know that the fact that the husband's only doing this because he's jealous. I mean in the male uh article she Zaralina was described as built like a fairy so there's that difference fairy promiscuous woman. So feminist sociologist Sue Lees actually refers to um the idea that you know when we say like built like it or when the media says like built like a fairy versus the promiscuous woman she refers to this as the virgin whore a dichotomy and where a person's sexual history can be used to discount their victimhood hence why you know we see this sort of language which emphasizes Zaralina's innocence so much. I mean what do you think about that when you read those stories who are you more likely to feel sympathy for? What effect does that have? I suppose I suppose it takes you're obviously more likely to feel sympathy for someone who feels as if they have absolutely no power but realistically if you are being attacked by anyone you never have any power like it doesn't make any difference whether or not you are someone who would typically be considered promiscuous or someone who wasn't because either way we should give all victims you know. Like how does your sexual activity relate to whether you're going to be a victim or not? I think that's a really old concept. I think this is it's about social control like we want to have like the idea is that you want the traditional women woman to still exist and this is why you know I think it's really important that we push back against these sort of narratives with like feminism and things these days and why it's so important that we do have um you know feminist sociologists such as Sue Lees who are like pointing out that these things still exist and that we need to be conscious of them when looking at media articles. I think the media really affects young people. I just think that this idea of like toxic masculinity is perpetuated by the media and in your case in particular I mean he was rejected. Yes I forgot about that element it was the idea of she had a bag wasn't it and he wanted to give his ex-girlfriend flowers and he was rejected and he was scorned in that way which is ridiculous but I just think that the media perpetuates this idea of being a man and young men believe that they need to assert dominance over women of course not all young men but that is being perpetuated by the media so in your case she rejected his flowers and he was embarrassed and I was looking at this study that was done in Greater Manchester recently and it was about how the media plays a massive part in perpetuating this as I've just said and it's the idea that although these like gender stereotypes predate social media, social media is exaggerating it as it's kind of creating this whole hard man masculine image and this rhetoric about what it means to be a man and just a quote from this article um this quote says throughout our research we heard young males using a script about becoming a man that says do not express any emotions but aggression reject anything feminine and see retaliation as strength so this is this is so related to the Ellie Ann Duncane yeah 100% as we see like this man with a bruised ego retaliating and that's like the pressure to be a man like social media I think we can all agree has intensified the pressure of being a man um I think the idea of like before social media men being able to like cool off and not having they're around it 24 7. I think this is amongst to be fair everyone like the idea that they were able to log off distress but now the idea of being a man is associated with being aggressive and violent and I think we can all kind of agree young women are often the victim of the fight of being a man and I think the masculinity masculinity image pressure really I think in our generation through social media is highlighted and tv like like top boy and yeah all these other things the media moral panic around top boy and the idea of boys this age are watching and integrating that lifestyle into their own lives it's just not suitable for the people that are watching it and also like the illegal lifestyle that is being portrayed to them it's influential and detrimental to young people's life being sensationalized exactly it's being so highly thought of in the media and it's such a conversation of have you watched have you watched the episode where blah blah blah and it's just a bit it's a bit much really for these age groups and age demographics to be getting so normalized with these lifestyles which aren't sustainable legal lifestyles you know I think it's um the idea that we see so much media from so many different media sources whether that be tv and movies stuff like top boy or whether that be through you know more traditional media like the news or new cv and things like that it does stir up what stanley cohen would term moral panics because and I think we've all experienced that ourselves like when we think of cases such as a bizarre alina case or the elaine and um elian and um case um like we definitely are conscious of these things like for example zara alina was literally walking home from um from a club when she was raped and murdered and I think that us four of us being women sat here I imagine that all of us at some point or another if not every time have felt conscious about the fact that we could be in danger or the feeling of that we are in danger if we're by ourselves whereas I think we all know that like our male counterparts don't feel that way I mean my I live with three boys and they always offer to walk me places and I would never do the same for them exactly they feel safe and I know they feel safe but we said like we said statistically yes men are attacked they're often more involved in violence and it's crazy that we actually feel so unsafe and yet we're actually more unsafe in our own exactly especially the idea of like women crossing the street if a man's walking behind I'm a subject that I always if I know that there's some man walking behind me I'm if I don't know them I cross the road and it's just nature now it's not just so sorry just say about that being unsafe in your own homes not less that's just statistically like of course it's all subject it's the idea that like most rape cases happen like you said earlier six or seven six out of seven happen by someone you know it's normally in your home or someone else's home it's not on the street it's not by these strangers we cross the roads because they're behind us realistically I think it's really interesting to point out though that I think the fact that we feel these things are is the media stirring up moral panics so for example yeah a BBC article that I found relating to the Zarolina case referred to Jordan McSweeney multiple times as a danger to any woman and obviously that's trying to instill fear in women that we should control it's worth it I think we can always say that yeah to be told don't walk home alone don't yeah you know don't wear outfits that are gonna oh my god the mail gave me a hundred percent I mean the idea is it could have been anyone it was any woman who happened to be there at that point it would have absolutely no relevance what she was wearing yeah and it's because of I think you know you talk about that being a man article and stuff like that it's because of the idea that you know be aggressive aggression and that moral kind of thing created has changed the way that we have our lives I mean I was reading this article from Abram and she said fear of rape keeps women inside it's actually controlling our behavior and I think that's mad which is absolutely crazy I think in both of these cases we can see that the fear is being installed even more which I guess the whole time we've kind of been speaking about but yeah so that's kind of a good day yeah um I just want to thank my guests for coming on today Madeline and Sasha it's amazing to discuss our point of views about crime in the media yeah and thank you very much to you and Naj as well yeah you've been amazing guys thank you for having us no problem all right guys we'll see you next week bye