A missing schoolgirl, a selfish teacher and a media storm

This is without question the hardest article I have ever had to write. The case of 15 year-old ***** ******* running off with her maths teacher Jeremy Forrest has been one that has greatly preoccupied the nation for the past week. However, so much nonsense has been written, from men trying to excuse Forrest’s actions, to those already deciding to convict Forrest, I have decided to take a deep breath and write.

The first question to address is “why?” Why this case? Why *****? After all, children in the UK go missing every day – each case equally as important. The simple reason: it is the sort of story the public loves to consume. It had the lot. It was sordid. It had mystery. There were plenty of witnesses, such as classmates, neighbours and teaching staff, ready to contribute to the script.

Tabloid journalists were able to invigorate their own dull and predictable home affairs routine by writing extensively about the case. They enjoyed speculating on what the pair were getting up to. The most frightening aspects of the teacher’s lifestyle were given a full and exaggerated analysis.

Voyeuristic readers were able to consume it, and make value judgements based on what they had read, and anyone who has taken an interest in this story is equally as guilty. As we absorbed the literature, we were able to morally justify our own irrelevant interest in a European missing persons case by criticising the actions of others. Everyone from police officers to staff at the much-criticised school were blamed for allowing it to happen.

The public, for their part, have at times reacted as rationally as you would expect. The majority hoped and prayed that both alleged abductor and abductee would return safe and well. Forrest, 30, has questions to answer. He is likely to face child abduction charges, and if found guilty is likely to serve a custodial sentence.

There is no doubt that any such punishment, if convicted, would be deserved. The lack of regular updates from their daughter would have had *****’s family in pieces. Media reports of Forrest’s bizarre online interests adding to fears that the schoolgirl was not in safe hands. At the very least, Forrest’s apparent selfishness gave no consideration to anyone else. His own parents were also overcome with worry.

For one week of madness, the man has given up his career, his wife and probably his liberty. He would be considered dangerous, if not so apparently stupid.

However, there are also irrational debates playing out in the public sphere. Examples of which can be found on this fleet street fox article and this marathon debate on the digitalspy website.

There are (mainly) men trying to justify Forrest’s behaviour. In its crudest form, some have implied that because the girl in question has a womanly figure, the relationship is somehow justifiable. Another is regarding the dichotomous nature of the age of consent, with 16 being acceptable and 15 not. The girl’s keenness has also been used as a means of justification.

There are two counter-points here. Firstly, the teacher is in a position of responsibility. The law reflects this, therefore until she is 18, any intimacy is strictly prohibited between teachers and pupils. Secondly, I ask just one question to those men who use such justifications: what if it was your daughter? Cue change of tune.

Another crude justification is that “it’s alright when the roles are reversed and it’s an older woman and younger lad – look at Caroline Flack and Harry Styles”. This is actually true and is something that society needs to debate and address. Caroline Flack, 32, received a lot of, erm, flak, when dating the young 17 year-old singer from One Direction – mostly from jealous One Direction fans. Meanwhile, wider debate was merely gossipy, with even begrudging admiration for them. Flack was cast as a ‘cougar’ (the predatory nickname for women who bag a younger model), and Styles as the young lad living the dream. Reverse the roles and you get a very different narrative: the story of the vulnerable and the predator – and not predator in the tongue-in-cheek context of the cougar either.

The idealism of true love has also been offered as a means of justification. It is true that anyone can fall in love. Sometimes people fall in love with someone they should not fall in love with. At 30 years of age, regardless of feelings, it is a matter of self-discipline to ensure that the relationship is not a wholly inappropriate one. All things considered, the relationship was inappropriate and the teacher/pupil context only serves to amplify the fact.

There are some other dangerously extreme writings on the matter, some of which may well fail the tests of libel at a later stage. Some have already taken it upon themselves to assume that something sexual has taken place between the pair. However probable this may be, it goes against any confirmed facts. More worryingly, another libellous term, beginning with the letter “P” is being chucked around extremely recklessly to describe Forrest (see the fleetstreetfox article link above). Again, he has not been convicted of anything, and the “P” word is an exaggeration of whatever he did do, however appalling his actions may be to us.

This was the hardest thing I have had to write for this blog, but that also made it a challenge. Hard, because in many ways it is a risky subject to tackle, and the wrong words can lead to a perception that I am defending the indefensible. These are issues that are not easily addressed by young men. Not that this blog ever has dealt with easy topics – witness my claim that men cannot be authentic feminists from a couple of months ago. The key thing to consider is that for about thirty minutes earlier today, when listening to The Jeremy Vine Show on BBC Radio 2, I started to assume the worst had happened. ***** ******* came home safe and well. For that we can be thankful.

Will BBC's new Director General drag the broadcaster back to the centre?

This week, George Entwistle has taken up his role as the new BBC Director General. All eyes will be on him, watching with interest in anticipation of which direction he will take the broadcaster. In particular, left-of-centre observers will be keen to see it brought back to the centre, following the excessive move to the right in a bid to correct its previously assumed leftist bias.

The myth of the BBC being substantially biased to the left (with the in-built implication of the broadcaster favouring the Labour Party) remains, often floated as a concept in newspapers which are explicitly biased towards the right - so hardly a neutral jury themselves. Demonstrations of this can be found in the Daily Telegraph, the Daily Mail and even The Sun. A Google search of "BBC bias" generates a whole plethora of websites of right-whingers claiming to feel hard done-by.

Such falsehoods become easy to promote when even the previous Director General of the BBC has claimed the broadcaster had to be seen to be compensate for a perceived leftist bias. Yet while under Thompson, the BBC may have been playing appeasement politics with its right-wing critics, the facts demonstrate that there are fewer and fewer visible leftist biases - in fact the opposite could indeed be argued.

It may have simply become in the interests of BBC reporters and researchers to take a right-wing standpoint on certain issues. While the structure of the BBC may be designed for it to be unbiased, the agents within it can speak their biases through their narratives. Furthermore, I would speculate that it is in the interest of many who are handsomely remunerated in the broadcast industry to share the interests of wealthy Tories. This is partly how the BBC is able to parade the Jeremy Clarksons of the world.

Can we really expect balance when Clarkson can go on whatever light entertainment programme he feels like, inflicting his views on anyone who will listen, all with a bit of a laugh? What about the BBC's Political Editor, Nick Robinson, who was a Young Conservative at the University of Oxford? And why is the Chairman of the BBC Trust a Tory? Why did Mark Thompson feel it necessary to steer the broadcaster, whose 'left bias' was only ever tenuous at best, to the right?

With the BBC in its current state, it is difficult to envisage voices of opposition and contention to the coalition government being sufficiently aired. An example of this malaise has been the coverage of the piecemeal privatisation of the NHS. For me, the process started with the Private Finance Initiative schemes, where public services were produced in association with private-sector providers. The benefit to the government was they got their new hospitals, schools and prisons up front, and the corporations that supplied the goods were paid back in installments over years, often decades. Now there is an expansion of this creeping privatisation.

All public spheres will inevitably have some relationship with private suppliers. Schools will not be expected to make their own calculators, for instance. However, the sale of ever greater slices of our public services has been woefully under-reported by the BBC. There is a quiet outrage on social networks about the unequal relationship between the reporting of the government's health upheaval and the breasts of the Duchess of Cambridge. This discursive media struggle is yet to play out on the main stage of debate.

This under-reporting may be because of the BBC’s own awkward position regarding the use of the private sector to provide services. A reasonable amount of its programming is produced by independent production companies, and the new Director General is keen for that to be increased.

However, on a broad level, there is still potential for BBC to reassert its role as the premier impartial public broadcast source - a status arguably lost to ITN. The following recommendations are ones which the BBC would do well to heed:-

1. The Staff: Employees in senior positions of the BBC hierarchy should neither be sourced from political parties, nor be strongly attached to one. The reason for this is it may lead the public to believe their public service broadcaster is (er...) biased! It would help if high-profile presenters were not using their light entertainment shows to sneakily transmit their political agendas.

2. Fair discussion for both sides of a debate: There should be rules for debates carried out applicable to all broadcasts. There should be a proponent, and opponent, and an agreed structure for their debate.

3. Fixing the in-built Question Time bias problem: Question Time is the BBC's leading political debate programme, but it is in serious need of a review. In the House of Commons, the Liberal Democrats take turns along with the Tories to ask questions to the Prime Minister, as they are part of a coalition. On Question Time, no such compromise has been made, as both parties from the coalition government benches are given representation. This would be less of an issue if the coalition had not set a precedent for collegiality in British coalition-building. On Question Time, therefore, we end up with two people making a slightly different defence of the government position, from their slightly different party political positions. These panelists are usually supplemented by the obligatory right-wing noise supplied by the David Starkeys and Kelvin MacKenzies of the world. This is nowhere near 'balanced' enough for a public service broadcaster.

At present, there is a fertile environment to generate distrust of the BBC and their news agenda. As I hope to have demonstrated here, addressing some of the above concerns, where practical would go a long way to rebuilding the trust the left has lost in the BBC.