Then presumably you can explain why Tom ap Rhys Price was invariably referred to as “City Lawyer”, Jody Dobrowski was always “gay barman”, Philip Lawrence was always “headteacher”, Harry Smart is now “young footballer”, Thomas Lee is just a “student”, Angelika Kluk is always “Polish student” and so on and so on and so on. Because to me, it looks like the media almost invariably picks up on some identifying fact about victims of violence, and that that fact is almost always their occupation, whether it’s considered distasteful or not. Call me strange, but I fail to see the problem with extending the same principle to prostitution, particularly when all the evidence suggests that the victims were killed specifically because they were prostitutes.
But, y’know, feel free to accuse the BBC of prurient interest in the occupation of City lawyers, headteachers and students. Plus, I’m probably lying because I disagree with you. It’s the sort of thing us deviants do.
Not only do I think everyone who doesn’t agree with me is lying, I think they’re ugly, smell bad, and have small vestigial tails just over the cracks of their asses. Since we’re all making shit up about what I said, why not get creative?
So, let’s be absolutely clear: You honestly, truly, deeply believe that prostitutes are treated by the media with identical respect to headteachers?
Oooh, what a dilemma. React to the strawman, or answer as if my interlocutor had two firing neurons to put together. High road; high road. I believe that in this instance, the prominence of their profession in the reporting in no way indicates any sort of prurience on the part of the media at large. Furthermore, I do not see how the media could possibly efface such a detail without operating a massive double standard. You’ve seen my examples, yes? I just picked the recent murder cases uppermost in my mind, searched the relevant stories on the BBC, and linked them. In all cases, the victims’ occupations was uppermost. This, to me, suggests that the current victims are being treated exactly as everyone else is, which is all I am willing to ask.
Now that I’ve done you the favour of responding straightforwardly to your question, how about you actually answer my question? Why should prostitutes have their profession effaced, when nobody else does? You’re trying to argue that “the meeja” is unhealthily fascinated with prostitution; I am pointing out that they identify everyone by their profession in this sort of story, even when it’s not relevant to the murder, which in this case it clearly is. Consequently, in asking them to efface the details of these women’s work, you are proposing a double standard. Are you intending to justify such a proposal, or will you continue to shrilly whine about how people are so horribly misrepresenting you?
I tell you, I’m all a-quiver waiting to find out which it is.
This is a joke, right? You saw how many times I’ve repeated that I don’t think it should be “effaced” at all – you saw my example, quoted twice now, of what I think a fair handling is – and you thought it would be hilarious to pretend you still didn’t get it?
No, you missed my emphasis. The advice being given by Suffolk police is that no women should go out alone in Ipswich at night. Not just prostitutes (as was the case with earlier statements).
Fuck off. Aside from actually knowing what ‘synergy’ means, you seem incapable of understanding that a criticism of the media is not necessarily a criticism of the police.
No, I thought I gave examples of stories in which people’s professions were given just as much prominence as these women’s has, with even less justification in terms of relevance to their murder. I thought that this demonstrated that referring to the women as “prostitutes” in headlines was not, in fact, an instance of lurid prurience, but merely standard reporting practice. I thought that you would be intelligent enough to recognise this argument and respond accordingly, but unfortunately on the latter point I was completely wrong.
Did you typo there? Is that not the question you wanted me to answer? Does it not imply that I think prostitutes should have their profession effaced?
Your presentation of examples from a single source about cases with vastly different contexts as if it were some kind of evidence about the media in general that deserves to be acknowledged is ridiculous. Your “evidence” is asinine. Are you actually claiming that hookers and college students are treated with the same respect by most news sources, or are you just trying to say that this particular thing is not a manifestation of that?
Of course it does. And you do. I have demonstrated handily that these women are being treated no differently in the respectable press to any other victim of murder. You keep insisting that you don’t want their profession effaced, but you do; you object to it being used in headlines, or as a primary description, despite the plain fact that no such standard is applied to any other victim of murder. You can either accept this, or simply admit that you are thrashing around without any hope of rationality. If it’s the latter, I do hope you’ll get on with it; the assumption that you’re debating in good faith is getting rather tiresome.
I am claiming, dear heart, that if supposedly respectable professions are used as descriptives (and I have proved that they are), then using allegedly disreputable professions as descriptives is not inherently judgmental. As I stated before, if you want to infer judgment from the use of the word “prostitute”, that is between you and your prejudices. I will continue to be aware that these were human beings independent of their stated profession, and I will do so despite any headlines that fail to inform me of their warm, loving kindness.
As for my choice of “a single source”, this was done specifically because I regard the BBC as an agency which takes great pains to balance its reporting, and yet is still apparently guilty of behaviour which you find objectionable. I would like you to explain what, specifically, is objectionable about their reporting of this case, and why you believe it is inconsistent with the reporting of any other murder case. At this point I hold out no hope whatsoever that you will even make the attempt, favouring as you surely will yet another boring diatribe about how you’ve been so horribly misunderstood. It is not my fault that I can comprehend the implications of your tired little posts; if you took a bit more care about them, maybe they’d actually have a modicum of consistency. As it is, it seems like you’re content to merely flail self-righteously at anyone with whom you perceive even a smidgen of disagreement. Maybe it’s a calling; who knows.
I just summarized the important part of that adorable little love note you just penned. Why, I do believe you’re trying to seduce me, Mr. or Ms. Badgerson! Oh, I play hard to get, but I’m a swooner, and your pantingly delicious romantic overtures are just too much for my resolve.
But our little affair may end all too soon, sweet cheeks. You’re sending roses to the wrong guy. To begin with, I’m a former sex worker, so pinning the tail on my “prejudices” just making me see the word “prostitute” as dirty doesn’t win you the prize.
My position is simple: The lives of hookers and students are not equally valued in the press, which is a reflection of the fact that they’re not equally valued by the public. Any position of yours deriving from a premise which doesn’t include this stone fact is inherently flawed. I’ve asked before, but again: Do you believe otherwise, or is your objection entirely specific to this example?
As for your “cites” – only an idiot would think one could extrapolate a general rule from a single source. I’ve never claimed that no media source is immune, but that the bias extends through most of them. Others might be dogging the Beeb in this thread, but I’m not. Your cites prove nothing either way, by themselves, and it’s charmingly ridiculous to pretend they’re some kind of evidence, sugarbuns.
THIS JUST IN: my prediction was right. It’s The Ipswich Ripper, according to the Mirror and The Star (in a commendably level-headed story compared to other tabloids).
However, the Daily Mail goes for The Suffolk Strangler, with a suitably Jack-the-Ripper-era photo of one of the victims dressed in Victoriana.
The Sun makes a mess of both assonance and alliteration, by insisting that he’s “The Suffolk Ripper”, who is a “prostitute serial killer”, which is a bit of an odd word order.
Meanwhile the Daily Express contributes the gem that Diana might have been murdered in a conspiracy.
Oh, the options. Shall I explain once more my choice of the BBC for examples? No, I think not. Shall I explain once more that it matters not what one believes about the biases behind the reporting, if one can demonstrate that these victims are being treated the same? No; more wasted pixels. No, instead I shall elucidate just one thing. In case you mistook my earlier condescension for some attempt at joviality, allow me to be clear:
Oh God, give it a rest, you unutterably boring, shrill, hypersensitive twat. Please let those capable of more than brainstem activity draw their own conclusions from what is in the vast majority of cases merely the reporting of the simple facts. Should you find said facts offensive, feel free to take it up with the nature of causality, which I am sure will be just as sympathetic to what I will charitably call your “point” as I have been. It is a matter of continual amazement to me that you believe anyone is interested in your mindbogglingly trite opinions, or that anyone finds your godawfully tortured way of expressing them even slightly entertaining. Were you to convert on the morrow to full-on evangelical Christianity, and decide to express this new-found faith solely through the medium of carved poo, your value as a poster here would triple. You are the expanded polystyrene of argumentation; fucking annoying, and inexplicably omnipresent. You combine the common sense of Paris Hilton with the horse sense of a particularly stupid horse and presumably the dress sense of the same.
In short, you are a very, very silly person. And, as you rightly surmise, I want you. It is the only possible explanation for my continued divergence from your authoritative opinion. My nipples are erect with anticipation of your proximate stupidity. Not since I spooned with Jade Goody on the prostrate form of Boris Johnson has my idiocy fetish come so close to satiation, and I salute you for it.
Two questions please… 1) How big of a town is Ipswich, relatively speaking? and 2) Is it common to change to the parlance of calling prostitutes “hookers” within a single UK news article? I’ve seen that done repeatedly in what I’ve been reading. Because ultimately, that is what raised my attention much more than the seemingly unnecessary use of what we’re discussing here. However, since I don’t read The Sun, Mirror or Mail, I could just as easily be talking out of my ass. For any answers, I offer thanks in advance and thoughts for those women and their loved ones. I can’t begin to imagine.
Oh, my poor beloved. Who’s feeling utterly misunderstood now? Does your bottom hurt?
Then you must be having a very slow day indeed, to keep coming back for more, my scrumptious honeypie.
Don’t stop there, baby. I’m also bitter, pathetic, vitriolic, retarded, racist, insecure, repulsive…I’ll stop there, because I am as modest as I am brilliant, but you get the idea. Many Pitizens have informed me of these and other qualities of my personality, but none sounded so sweet to my ears as yours, sugarlips. Well, maybe that one time Martin Hyde called me a perfect example of the degenerates around here. That was pretty fucking hot.
Please do explain, my simmering pot of sex, how my example of a good way to handle things is in any way a matter of finding the “facts offensive”:
Once again, how utterly fucking unreasonable of me. I know, I know: I’m a radical. It’s true.
This is another joke, right? Not the trite part, the “tortured”. Have you written any sentences today that didn’t contain six adjectives and two subclauses? You sound like an 83 year old woman suffering from arthritis, tetanus, and the beginnings of rigor mortis, with her panties jammed so far up her ass they’re sticking out her nose. A little stiff, I mean to say. A few “fucks” would brighten it up some, and also of course give me an enormous erection if you use that shocked & appalled voice on me some more, you naughty little minx, you.
You’re too kind. I figured you’d put me on at least the fifth level of carved poo, but here I am with a mere three times the distance to home to go. Just think, our most valuable posters are barely half a sacred engraved poo away from their posts and opinions thereof actually having some value!
This bit would work better if the first joke weren’t outdated (I just came back from a break in posting), and the second “joke” weren’t…at all.
You bring the buttplugs, and I’ll set up the rack, and luck won’t have nothin’ to do with it. It’s like fate that we met, eyes dancing across a crowded cesspool…Until we meet again, snugglekins, I shall remain your faithful fool, lapping at the pointy nipples of your rage.
Sorry, I meant to specifically say, they called them prostitutes, right up front in the first sentence. None of this “three women, now identified as prostitutes” beating around the bush.
I interpreted your comment to mean that you thought the media were reporting in a way contrary to what the police wanted. My apologies if I misunderstood your point.
