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Midsomer
I'm concerned about the way people describe other people on public forums. This isn't a newspaper - but here are a couple of paragraphs from the Press Complaints Commission code of practice about describing people.
12 Discrimination
i) The press must avoid prejudicial or pejorative reference to an individual's race, colour, religion, gender, sexual orientation or to any physical or mental illness or disability.
ii) Details of an individual's race, colour, religion, sexual orientation, physical or mental illness or disability must be avoided unless genuinely relevant to the story.
If I'm mugged. for example, and I can say the mugger was a woman, white, a teenager, abut five feet eight, blue eyes, mole on her chin, walked with a limp, was wearing a yellow hoodie then that be as a helpful and reasonably precise description of use to other people and not likely to cause a problem for other woman in the area who fit a portion but not all of the description.
In London 2011, if I just say a black teenager with a hoodie mugged me, well it all gets a bit Midsomer Murders at that point.
I hope this post comes across as a helpful hint rather than a lecture but I'll take the risk as I think it important.
12 Discrimination
i) The press must avoid prejudicial or pejorative reference to an individual's race, colour, religion, gender, sexual orientation or to any physical or mental illness or disability.
ii) Details of an individual's race, colour, religion, sexual orientation, physical or mental illness or disability must be avoided unless genuinely relevant to the story.
If I'm mugged. for example, and I can say the mugger was a woman, white, a teenager, abut five feet eight, blue eyes, mole on her chin, walked with a limp, was wearing a yellow hoodie then that be as a helpful and reasonably precise description of use to other people and not likely to cause a problem for other woman in the area who fit a portion but not all of the description.
In London 2011, if I just say a black teenager with a hoodie mugged me, well it all gets a bit Midsomer Murders at that point.
I hope this post comes across as a helpful hint rather than a lecture but I'll take the risk as I think it important.
Comments
Can I suggest that next time you have this concern, you speak to the person concerned directly via the whisper function? As it is, this kind of context-free general statement is particularly unhelpful.
I started to compose a righteous response, but realised this could be an excellent spot of trolling
surely the point is that the more detailed a description anyone can give, the better and the more generic, the more likely to raise archetype based issues
Personally, I like it better when we're arguing over use of grammar and the like....
FFS indeed.
And so it's down to all of us to listen to the others point of view and even if you don't like it all, sometimes there may be a piece of genius or help we can extract. If trying to remember more detail from a mugging might help catch them, I'm all for it. If remembering they were wearing a white hoodie adds the level of detail that others might need to stop them freaking at any kid in a hoodie, great.
I reckon you and @HelenM are both right and both wrong and that is OK. Therewith my mellow rant.
200 white people have brutally murdered their neighbours on tv in midsomer murders with knives and guns and candlesticks - its time some ethnic minorities did some slaying,balance things up a bit.
carry on
When a council can ban piglet from Winnie the poo so it wont offend Muslims.
Or not calling a blackboard a blackboard but a chalkboard, so not to offend black people.
And if someone gets offended by the word blackboard or a picture of piglet they really need to get out more.
PC in my eyes has gone to far, were changing language so not to offend people, would it not be better to change the mindset?
The film The Dam Busters used the word nigger as a code word (it was the name of Guy Gibson's dog) yet the new film has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on meetings to discuss the use of the word for the remake. How can we rewrite history so we don't offend people? It wasn't used as a derogatory term then and wont be now.
There rant over and as I am just a normal bloke form the wild and damp Yorkshire dales what do I know (hmm is that not racist or at best un PC?)
More to the point why does it bother you so? It comes out of the producers' pockets anyway, not the taxpayer's.
BTW the offensive bit about Midsomer was not that the village was all white - thats a casting decision and up to the producers of the show. What was offensive was the producer's rather illuminating personal view of why it was cast that way - i.e. that having a non-white person in a rural village destroys its englishness - the obvious inference being that to belong in England you have to be white. That is straight off the BNP manifesto and that is why he was criticised.
Perhaps instead of banging on about political correctness, people could consider the language they use from the perspective of basic human decency and respect.
@ Matt79 - there is nothing wrong in describing someone's physical appearance including skin colour racial characteristics - thats how you identify them! I cant see how "black teenager wearing a hoodie" is remotely offensive - its a factual description.
The value is obvious - 1. its true and 2. the police are more likely to catch them as an accurate description of the suspects is in the public domain.
I do understand the point you are making; there are newpapers out there that that feed off racist and religious stereotypes and give disproportonate attention to perpertrators from those communities - this is a problem but I dont think censoring eye witness accounts of crimes is the way to solve this.
"It just wouldn't work. Suddenly we might be in Slough ... We're the last bastion of Englishness and I want to keep it that way."
The clear implication is good BNP stuff - doesnt matter that you are English born and bred or that your parents were etc England is about "race" and "you" dont belong here. I dont really care what he meant or whether he believes it hinself - thats his business - when you are in the public eye you either think before you open your mouth, you keep it firmly shut or bear the consequences. He is doing the latter.
I agree thats definitely a risk.