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| On Woolwich, British media could learn from Swedish riots coverage | On Woolwich, British media could learn from Swedish riots coverage |
| (4 months later) | |
| When I saw that riots around Stockholm had made the front page of the Financial Times, I scurried over to the sites of Swedish papers to see in some detail what was happening. It turned out that the dismembered parts of a Thai woman had been found in Lapland, various television stars had been variously unhappy in their love lives, a farmer had caused the evacuation of a police station in the south of the country by handing in 12 sticks of dynamite he'd had lying around the place – oh, and there had been a hundred or so cars burnt out in the satellite towns around Stockholm. | When I saw that riots around Stockholm had made the front page of the Financial Times, I scurried over to the sites of Swedish papers to see in some detail what was happening. It turned out that the dismembered parts of a Thai woman had been found in Lapland, various television stars had been variously unhappy in their love lives, a farmer had caused the evacuation of a police station in the south of the country by handing in 12 sticks of dynamite he'd had lying around the place – oh, and there had been a hundred or so cars burnt out in the satellite towns around Stockholm. |
| Only the conservative Svenska Dagbladet had led with the news a couple of days ago, when I started watching the coverage. Do these things become less newsworthy after three or four nights, or is it deliberate policy not to encourage copycat rioting? | Only the conservative Svenska Dagbladet had led with the news a couple of days ago, when I started watching the coverage. Do these things become less newsworthy after three or four nights, or is it deliberate policy not to encourage copycat rioting? |
| I can only assume that it's the latter, coupled with a certain prudishness about violence. Even the most sensationalist of the papers did not reproduce anywhere prominent on their websites the pictures of the English atrocity. For once, I think the Swedish press is showing the English one a good example. | I can only assume that it's the latter, coupled with a certain prudishness about violence. Even the most sensationalist of the papers did not reproduce anywhere prominent on their websites the pictures of the English atrocity. For once, I think the Swedish press is showing the English one a good example. |
| This is not because the problem will cease to exist if we ignore it. In some ways it will actually get worse. We should admit, though, that this kind of nannying provokes a backlash. A lot of the appeal of the nationalist and reactionary Sweden Democrats comes from the sense that the ordinary people of Sweden have been consistently lied to about immigration and its consequences. You need only dip into the Twitter streams hashtagged with the rioting suburbs to see this in action. | This is not because the problem will cease to exist if we ignore it. In some ways it will actually get worse. We should admit, though, that this kind of nannying provokes a backlash. A lot of the appeal of the nationalist and reactionary Sweden Democrats comes from the sense that the ordinary people of Sweden have been consistently lied to about immigration and its consequences. You need only dip into the Twitter streams hashtagged with the rioting suburbs to see this in action. |
| So a conspiracy of silence around the problems of areas with high levels of recent immigration will do nothing to solve their long-term problems and may make them much worse. One of the reasons for the particular character of Swedish race relations is that there is a huge amount of housing segregation between suburban settlements which are miles apart and hidden from each other by intervening forest or farmland. Only in Malmö is there anything corresponding geographically to the English "inner cities". Everywhere else is almost as remote from the main cities as Luton is from London. Research has shown that this kind of isolation is one of the three main predictors of car-burning in any particular areas (the others being youth unemployment and welfare dependence in the parents' generation). | So a conspiracy of silence around the problems of areas with high levels of recent immigration will do nothing to solve their long-term problems and may make them much worse. One of the reasons for the particular character of Swedish race relations is that there is a huge amount of housing segregation between suburban settlements which are miles apart and hidden from each other by intervening forest or farmland. Only in Malmö is there anything corresponding geographically to the English "inner cities". Everywhere else is almost as remote from the main cities as Luton is from London. Research has shown that this kind of isolation is one of the three main predictors of car-burning in any particular areas (the others being youth unemployment and welfare dependence in the parents' generation). |
| But that does not mean that a certain dampening of excitement about particular riots is not an excellent idea. For one thing they are hardly unprecedented. There have been sporadic riots by disaffected young men in Sweden ever since the mid-90s. By no means all were ethnic minorities – half of those so far arrested in Stockholm were white. No one has ever been killed in these excitements, although people from minority groups have been killed by racist Swedish gunmen deliberately targeting them in other incidents. | But that does not mean that a certain dampening of excitement about particular riots is not an excellent idea. For one thing they are hardly unprecedented. There have been sporadic riots by disaffected young men in Sweden ever since the mid-90s. By no means all were ethnic minorities – half of those so far arrested in Stockholm were white. No one has ever been killed in these excitements, although people from minority groups have been killed by racist Swedish gunmen deliberately targeting them in other incidents. |
| It's also quite clear that boredom and a wish to be noticed are among the drivers of the disturbances. Dialling down the excitement reduces the chance that they will spread. | It's also quite clear that boredom and a wish to be noticed are among the drivers of the disturbances. Dialling down the excitement reduces the chance that they will spread. |
| Beyond that kind of instrumental approach, I think there is another, moral point, which may be deeply unfashionable. Instead of asking whether these pictures are likely to be bad for potential rioters, we might also ask whether they are going to be bad for the rest of us. What purpose, exactly, does it serve to know what a bloodstained murderer looks like, or even a hooded youth throwing a molotov cocktail? | Beyond that kind of instrumental approach, I think there is another, moral point, which may be deeply unfashionable. Instead of asking whether these pictures are likely to be bad for potential rioters, we might also ask whether they are going to be bad for the rest of us. What purpose, exactly, does it serve to know what a bloodstained murderer looks like, or even a hooded youth throwing a molotov cocktail? |
| It will be objected that this kind of decision is paternalistic, and that the pictures of riots will get out anyway. So perhaps the problem is not so much whether these things should be shown at all as whether they should be shown over and over again. It seems an inevitable part of the workings of television news that they should be so. I believe that the apparently endless repetition of the twin towers footage in 2001 (I was travelling in the states at the time, so I saw a lot of television) did a great deal to madden the American people and to promote their disastrous invasion of Iraq. | It will be objected that this kind of decision is paternalistic, and that the pictures of riots will get out anyway. So perhaps the problem is not so much whether these things should be shown at all as whether they should be shown over and over again. It seems an inevitable part of the workings of television news that they should be so. I believe that the apparently endless repetition of the twin towers footage in 2001 (I was travelling in the states at the time, so I saw a lot of television) did a great deal to madden the American people and to promote their disastrous invasion of Iraq. |
| I have watched the attacker's statement once. I will not watch it again. The Swedish newspapers, in their conspiracy of ignorance, are acting with a moral purpose. They want to make their country a slightly better place. Our own papers clearly can't behave that way. But as readers and viewers we can exercise our own self-discipline and refuse to wallow in the gore. When the thing comes up on screen again, just switch it off. There's nothing new there. Spend the time which you night have spent in pleasurable outrage in hard thought instead about what we, today, can do to make things a little better here. | I have watched the attacker's statement once. I will not watch it again. The Swedish newspapers, in their conspiracy of ignorance, are acting with a moral purpose. They want to make their country a slightly better place. Our own papers clearly can't behave that way. But as readers and viewers we can exercise our own self-discipline and refuse to wallow in the gore. When the thing comes up on screen again, just switch it off. There's nothing new there. Spend the time which you night have spent in pleasurable outrage in hard thought instead about what we, today, can do to make things a little better here. |
| • Comments have been removed for legal reasons | • Comments have been removed for legal reasons |
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