Last night BBC Four screened a film from director Morgan Matthews, which featured every teenage killing that occurred in the UK during 2009. Whilst the film itself remains on my iPlayer ‘to do’ list, I listened to an interview yesterday which featured Matthews and Shanna Wilson, sister of Shevon Wilson; a young man who was stabbed to death in Bristol in 2009.
Morgan Matthews speaks about his frustration with a media that reports the death of a young man in a ‘generic’ way, with the story ‘reduced to a picture and a few lines using certain language’. The result is that we read about the violent death of a young person and we make certain assumptions about him, and the circumstances of his death. Matthews continues to explain that he believes that people ‘lose some of the sympathy they might have had with the victim’ because ‘ journalists had pieced together a story based on their own assumptions and stereotypes’. As a result we ‘buy into the idea’ that somehow the death of a ‘young black lad, wearing a hoodie, outside a pub’ is not newsworthy.
At ycml we agree with Matthews final comment, that there needs to be a change in the way that the media reports on these kinds of stories.
Nigel Pimlott will be exploring societal sin as part of the ycml day on image. Book your tickets at http://ycml.org.uk
