Police must open up, say reporters
It’s not just photographers who are annoyed at their treatment by police. Reporters too are becoming frustrated at being denied information they are entitled to. Investigative freelance PAUL LASHMAR reports
“THE POLICE are spending increasingly large amounts of their budget on PR even as their overall budgets are suffering. Many forces now see it as their business not just to cut crime but to manage the public’s perception of crime. This is wrong.” So said the freedom of information campaigner Heather Brooke in a recent article in the Times, in which she revealed that Britain’s police forces now spend nearly £40 million a year on media relations.
Heather Brooke touched on a raw nerve for many reporters. For while PR budgets rocket, some police forces are not providing basic information on serious crimes and other forces are manipulating the information they do release.
All this comes at a time of growing tensions between the police and the media over the harassment of photographers covering demonstrations and police use of their new “war on terror” powers to demand journalists turn over their source notes, as in the case of Shiv Malik.
Working reporters are asking whether there needs to be a clear set of national guidelines negotiated with the police which sets what must be released and how quickly. They say they find it difficult to obtain reliable information from some police forces on crimes as they happen.
Some forces do not give information about serious crimes or events on their patch quickly, nor prioritise them. The crimes they do detail are randomly chosen. Reporters complain that information is sketchy outside Monday to Friday office hours.
Some forces are exerting greater control on releasing information, especially on violent crime. Police are very concerned over perception of crime, where there is a view that the public, especially vulnerable people, have a fear of crime that far outweighs the reality.
In some cases forces try to play down violent crime in their area as “atypical”. In more serious cases forces have blocked the release of information that could cause embarrassment. It is also getting more difficult to speak to police officers directly.
The best known case of the moment is that of freelance reporter Nigel Green’s battle to get Northumbria Police to be more open with the media. Nigel Green says he is fighting for the fundamental right to information from the police: “There’s a risk I may come across as being anti-police, which I am not. Frontline officers do a difficult and dangerous job. The ones I talk to are also sick of the PR spin and the way the public are misled.”
Nigel Green is not alone. Recently I rang the voicebank of a county force in the South West and they were providing details of just one incident, a house fire.
Police are public servants and are paid for by the public. The media have a fourth estate role to monitor police performance. Police forces should release information on crimes and events in their areas without regard to the impact on their public image. It is for the media, not the police, to select which crimes are reported and which are not.
A group of reporters has been discussing whether there should be a campaign to get the police to regularise the way they release information to the media. We would be interested to know what working reporters think of the service provided by their local forces so we can get an idea of which forces are providing a good service and which are providing a patchy service.