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Fri, 21 Nov 2008

About Time

As I go to work, I walk past the newspapers in the station shop. For the last week, many of them have had 'BABY P' in large letters on the front.

The Times today had, as their main headline, "Four at-risk children die from abuse every week".

Finally, someone noted that there are children other than Baby P who have suffered, and who continue to suffer.

About fucking time.

As tragic as Baby P's death undeniably is, the continuing obsession over it is disgusting. It paints a picture of a country more interested in moral outrage than morality, more interested in calling for action than action itself, more interested in dwelling on the past than trying to improve the future, of a media keen to capitalise and encourage these qualities. I try to avoid being a part of this picture. Who wouldn't?

During the course of the coverage of the Baby P story, another 4 children in the UK will have died in similar circumstances. One hundred and eighty thousand children will have died across the whole world. One hundred and eighty thousand. I haven't seen them in the headlines recently. I couldn't even name a single one of them. Could you?

Turns out I'm part of the picture after all.

Posted: Fri, 21 Nov 2008 01:26 | Tags: , , , | Comments: 1 |

Comments

In your opinion, would the Times still have reported it if it weren't for Baby P?

People need examples of things to make impact. Just reporting that x many children die every week isn't going to reach people on a personal level as much as the Baby P story has; the pictures and stories surrounding it have obviously sparked loads of interest. Which is both bad and good.

And I suspect that if every week, every newspaper did a spot on the children that had died of abuse that week, it would be a) very depressing and b) desensitising - people wouldn't care as much if it were all so commonplace.

That's why things like NSPCC adverts show specific cases of child abuse (whether fictional examples or not). They did a TV advert a while ago on an abused baby who was getting treatment not unlike Baby P's. I don't know if it's still airing. They say x million children are suffering but also give suffering children a representative face.

I do agree with everything you say, but the fact that 180,000 children dying weekly goes unnoticed isn't necessary to bring up in order to observe the moral reprehensibleness of a country more focussed on the failure of Child Services than it is on the horror of the act itself.
Posted by Will at Fri Nov 21 18:10:42 2008

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