It is often said that Vietnam was the first television war. By the same token, Cleveland was the first war over the protection of children to be fought not in the courts, but in the media. By the summer of 1987 Cleveland had become above all, a hot media story. The Daily Mail, for example, had seven reporters, plus its northern editor, based in Middlesbrough full time. Most other news papers and television news teams followed suit. What were all the reporters looking for? Not children at risk. Not abusing adults. Aggrieved parents were the mother lode sought by these prospecting journalists. Many of these parents were only too happy to tell – and in some cases, it would appear, sell– their stories. Those stories are truly extraordinary. In many cases they bore almost no relation to the facts. Parents were allowed - encouraged to portray themselves as the innocent victims of a runaway witch-hunt and these accounts were duly fed to the public. Nowhere in any of the reporting is there any sign of counterbalancing information from child protection workers or the organisations that employed them. Throughout the summer of 1987 newspapers ‘reported’ what they termed a national scandal of innocent families torn apart. The claims were repeated in Parliament and then recycled as established ‘facts’ by the media. The result was that the courts themselves began to be paralysed by the power of this juggernaut of press reporting – ‘journalism’ which created and painstakingly fed a public mood which brooked no other version of the story. (p21) . Sue Richardson
Some Similar Quotes
  1. Usually adult males who are unable to make emotional connections with the women they choose to be intimate with are frozen in time, unable to allow themselves to love for fear that the loved one will abandon them. If the first woman they passionately loved,... - Bell Hooks
  2. But even when I stop crying, even when we fall asleep and I'm nestled in his arms, this will leave another scar. No one will see it. No one will know. But it will be there. And eventually all of the scars will have scars,... - Amanda Grace
  3. You know all that sympathy that you feel for an abused child who suffers without a good mom or dad to love and care for them? Well, they don't stay children forever. No one magically becomes an adult the day they turn eighteen. Some people... - Ashly Lorenzana
  4. Often men who have been emotionally neglected and abused as children by dominating mothers bond with assertive women, only to have their childhood feelings of being engulfed surface. While they could not 'smash their mommy' and still receive love, they find that they can engage... - Bell Hooks
  5. He placed his handson my mindbefore reachingfor my waistmy hipsor my lipshe didn't call mebeautiful firsthe called meexquisite - how he touches me - Rupi Kaur
More Quotes By Sue Richardson
  1. But nothing in my previous work had prepared me for the experience of reinvestigating Cleveland. It is worth – given the passage of time – recalling the basic architecture of the Crisis: 121 children from many different and largely unrelated families had been taken into...
  2. It is often said that Vietnam was the first television war. By the same token, Cleveland was the first war over the protection of children to be fought not in the courts, but in the media. By the summer of 1987 Cleveland had become above...
  3. ..Cleveland was the first war over the protection of children to be fought not in the courts, but in the media.. Given that most of the hearings took place out of sight of the press, the following examples are taken from the recollection of child...
Related Topics