Stab in the Back for London's People

That the BBC website have published images of the 21 teenagers that have all been killed in London since Jauary 2008. All these deaths have been caused by gang and street violence. I find it awful that 90 % of the victims of these awful crimes have all been from ethnic minorities, and I worry about the message that the BBC have given out by publicising their pictures and names. I worry for the ignorant people who will take one look at this feature and only see one thing, a brown face, an ethnic name and knife crime. It is this sort of association that needs to be tackled.

The press is forever filled with reports of terrorism, murder, assaults, gun crime and very often seem to feature ethnic minorities as being the culprits. I find this unfair as thousands of crimes are committed every day in this country and only a handful are picked up by the press. This is the same in the case of the exposure that the Madeline McCann case got when she went missing. The fact is that thousands of children go missing every single day, and their parents too, go through the same motions of loss, despair and grief, yet these cases are very rarely made so public. At the same time of the McCann dissappearance a number of children went missing and a few of them were from ethnic backgrounds, yet do we know their names?

I feel that the press have a responsibility, as reporters, to thoroughly research what is going on when cases like this occur. It is unfortunate for the knife and street crime report that it did happen in London, which is, as a Capital city very cosmopolitan. But I feel it would be better that they include some sort of side bar at least to give some demographic information. Just so ignorant people do not jump to conclusions, as these sorts of subliminal features lead to more and more discordence in society and eventually produce more hate crimes.

Something seriously does need to be addressed with regard to the massive increase in gang violence in cities, as this was not an issue in my teenage years. And at the age of 22, to have seen this happen in the mere space of a decade is devastating and makes you seriously worried for what the future holds. The increase in gang culture is synonymous with the Americanisation of the UK that is occurring. A balance of the UK's identity, moral stance, and responsibility to youths education needs to be struck. With the arrival of digital tv our households have become pumped full of more and more american television. This only used to be the case for those of us with cable and digital, but for analogue users it was not nearly on the same level. I remember my mother always moaning about the amount of American television that my brother and I watched, and I never understood why. But now I certainly do.

Could Blaire have possibly have done more to bring this country crashing down into a crime riddled and recession bound entity?

Click this link to see the feature http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7510901.stm