‘Baby faced tearaway given Asbo which bans him from going out without his parents after year-long reign of terror harassing vulnerable elderly and disabled people’.21 The mass media play a significant role in informing the public about young people, youth groups and youth subcultures.22 The national press in particular is a key agency23 through the selection and types of articles published. However, the press transform information by translating events into language based on the newspaper’s assumption about its audience and their language.24 In a bid to create
‘newsworthy’ articles and to maintain the ‘fear narrative’,25 the popular press tend to exaggerate and sensationalise stories involving young people. Moreover, stories tend to focus on negative or pessimistic subjects involving teenage delinquency and violence, especially gang-related gun crime:
Gun crime is particularly newsworthy, especially when it involves black gunmen with gang affiliations and innocent victims who are caught in crossfire. Column inches can also be filled focusing on extreme consequences of anti-social behaviour: in the UK several cases have been heavily profiled by the press where the victim has committed suicide.26
The popular press are thus involved in the stereotyping and the negative labelling process of young people. John Muncie noted the following negative labels attributed to young people in the British press, during the first decade of the 21st century: ‘hoodies’, ‘boy racers’, ‘mini-moto riders’, ‘happy slappers’, ‘video-gamers’, ‘under-age binge drinkers’ and ‘feral yobs’.27
20 Howard BECKER, op. cit.
21 Dan BLOOM, ‘Baby Faced Tearaway Given Asbo’, Daily Mail, 21 March 2014.
22 For a summary of the main critical studies of media representations of youth and crime see John MUNCIE, op. cit., pp. 12-13.
23 Ibid., p. 9.
24 Stuart HALL & Tony JEFFERSON, Resistance through Rituals, op. cit., pp. 75-76.
25 David ALTHEIDE, ‘Moral Panic: From Sociological Concept to Public Discourse’, Crime, Media and Culture, vol. 5, n° 1, pp.79-99.
26 Andy FURLONG, Youth Studies: An Introduction, London: Routledge, 2013, p. 188.
27 John MUNCIE, op. cit., p. 9.
The two biggest selling national tabloid newspapers in Britain are The Sun and the Daily Mail with circulations of 2.04 million and 1.72 million respectively in February 2014.28 They are the prime proponents of sensational stories about young people. The following recent article from the Daily Mail is a typical example; it describes in hyperbolic terms ‘the reign of terror’ of a ‘teenage crime wave’:
Yob aged just 15 has been arrested 133 times and is already Merseyside’s fourth most prolific criminal ever
Teenager, from the Wirral, has been convicted 28 times
Just three other criminals in Merseyside have racked up more arrests Politician says more ‘special measures’ are needed to stop repeat offending
A 15-year-old boy has been arrested 133 times, making him one of Britain’s most prolific criminals. The teenage crime-wave committed all the offences close to his home on the Wirral, near Liverpool, and has so far been convicted a total of 28 times. [...] In September 2012 troublemaker Jordan Kemp Withey, then 13, was slapped with a two-year antisocial behaviour order that covers the whole of the Humberside Police area. Withey’s crimes started on Havenfield estate in Bridlington, East Yorkshire, but soon spread elsewhere. His reign of terror has included criminal damage, theft, trespassing and causing harassment, alarm and distress and began when he was just nine.29
A study of all the online articles about British young people from 1 to 21 April 2014 in The Sun and the Daily Mail reveals a relentless negative narrative. During these three weeks, The Sun published 50 articles and the Daily Mail published 60 articles about young people (see Tables 3 and 4). Eight per cent of articles in The Sun could be deemed positive or optimistic—including one article about a young lottery winner and two articles about young cancer sufferers, one of whom was raising funds for a charity: ‘Incurable cancer teen’s bucket list to raise £1million for charity’ (The Sun, 14 April 2014).30 Similarly, in the Daily Mail, eight per cent of articles could be construed as positive or optimistic—including the 27 year-old grandfather who is relieved that his daughter has become a child parent rather than a drug user:
‘“It could have been worse—she could have been doing drugs”: Father of new mother, 12, says he is proud after she and boyfriend, 13, become Britain’s youngest parents’ (Daily Mail, 16 April 2014).31 In fact, all the ‘good news’ stories about young people in the Daily Mail contain references to deviant behaviour, for example, ‘Teenager earns £24,000 a year uploading YouTube videos of himself
28 AUDIT BUREAU OF CIRCULATIONS (ABC), http://www.abc.org.uk [accessed 5 May 2014].
29 Sam WEBB, ‘Yob Aged Just 15 Arrested 133 times’, Daily Mail, 7 April 2014.
30 Fran WETZEL, ‘Incurable Cancer Teen’s Bucket List to Raise £1million for Charity‘, Sun, 14 April 2014.
31 Mark DUELL, John STEVENS & Leon WATSON, ‘“It Could Have Been Worse—She Could Have Been Doing Drugs”: Father of New Mother, 12, Says He Is Proud after She and Boyfriend, 13, Become Britain’s Youngest Parents’, Daily Mail, 16 April 2014.
playing Grand Theft Auto (despite being too young to play it legally)’ (Daily Mail, 2 April 2014).32
The stories are overwhelmingly negative in their portrayal of young people or they portray them in negative circumstances. Young people are most frequently shown to be either the perpetrators or the victims of violence, including murder, sexual assault, bullying and suicide; they are also linked to excessive risky behaviour, for example, drug taking, binge drinking, underage sex (teenage pregnancy) and eating disorders. In all cases, the stories represent young people deviating from social norms. In this way, the tabloids label young people as deviant:
they are violent Yobs and Thugs (the most common labels); they are anti-social;
they get pregnant when still at primary school; they are unemployed; they take recreational drugs (especially ‘Meow Meow’, i.e. Mephedrone, an amphetamine);
they binge drink; they have eating disorders; they are addicted to social media; they are members of gangs and they are religious extremists and potential terrorists fighting in Syria. All of these ‘deviant’ behaviours were mentioned in articles in The Sun and the Daily Mail during the first three weeks of April 2014.
Intriguingly, only two stories on young people during the period under scrutiny feature in both tabloids. This suggests that the hundred other stories about young people which only appeared in one of the two tabloids were not in reality significant news items. They were possibly only included to ‘fill page space’ or to criticize young people. The two stories common to The Sun and the Daily Mail both dealt with extreme cases of deviancy in line with the fear narrative. First, the twelve-year-old new mother who became pregnant by a 13-year-twelve-year-old boy when still attending primary school in Middlesbrough, North East England; their combined ages make them the youngest parents ever in England and the girl’s father is an apparently proud 27-year-old. Second, a pair of brothers from Wolverhampton who were both given Anti-social Behaviour Orders (ASBOs) when they were younger, one of whom has just been to prison. In both cases, the journalists use normative, regulatory and moralising discourse towards the protagonists in the stories. There is nothing new in this: ‘The media have long operated as agents of moral indignation in their own right’.33
32 Victoria WOLLASTON, ‘Teenager Earns £24,000 a Year Uploading YouTube Videos of Himself Playing Grand Theft Auto (Despite Being too Young to Play it Legally)’, Daily Mail, 2 April 2014.
33 Stanley COHEN, op. cit., p. 16.