Britain is soft on crime

I’m not actually a journalist, although I’m often described as such. Along with all the other critics, polemicists, and columnists, I should more accurately be described as a ‘commentator’, since my job is to sit around and opine. 

Real journalists do exist, but they are a dying breed. When newspapers and magazines started to move online at the beginning of this century, it was discovered that the public weren’t very interested in journalism. Outlets realised that it was the commentary that actually attracted clicks, along with porn and funny cat videos, and so the commentators were rewarded while many of the journalists lost their jobs. 

Over the last two decades, even big legacy outlets have ditched their investigative teams and foreign bureaus. In the UK, over 300 local newspaper titles closed between 2009 and 2019, while those that remain are struggling for resources. Alongside foreign news, domestic crime reporting has been worst hit. A House of Commons justice committee report from 2022 warned of a ‘well-documented decline’ in news coverage of the UK courts. In one snapshot study of Bristol Magistrates’ Court in 2018, students sat through 200 cases before they saw their first reporter.