Press Reporting and its Aftermath: The Rachel Nickell Case
| Published date | 01 October 1996 |
| Author | Chris Grover,Keith Soothill |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032258X9606900408 |
| Date | 01 October 1996 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
CHRIS GROVER
HonoraryResearch Fellow, Department
of
AppliedSocial Science,
Lancaster University,
UK
KEITH SOOTHILL
Professor
of
Social Research, Lancaster University
PRESS REPORTING AND ITS
AFTERMATH: THE RACHEL
NICKELL CASE
Introduction
The reporting of sex crimes in the British press is highly selective. The
press does not report every sexual offence which occurs. Reflecting this,
Soothill and Walby (1991) stress that it is the most sensational and/or
titillating cases which the press tends to concentrate on. In fact in recent
years the press has widened its scope in the reporting of sex crime. In
the 1970s the press primarily concentrated on the reporting of rape trials,
described as being akin to a soft porn package in order to sell news-
papers (Hay, Soothill and Walby, 1980). However, since the 1980s there
has been a move away from a concentration on rape trials (Soothill,
1994). The search for sex offenders in cases where no one falls under
immediate suspicion is one such example of this widening process in the
scope of reporting sex crime. In the case of the murder of Rachel
Nickell, a focus on the press reporting during this stage, as well as the
immediate aftermath of the release of the man accused of her murder,
enables us to grasp the wider symbolic importance of some crimes.
The murder of Rachel Nickell on Wimbledon Common in July 1992
was reported as "THE MURDER THAT SHOCKED THE NATION"
(Daily Mirror, August 10, 1992). Reflecting this, it attracted intense
media coverage and received the greatest press coverage of the search
for a sex offender in 1992. This intensity was once again evident when
Colin Stagg, the man accused of her murder, was released in September
1994 after crucial parts of the prosecution's evidence were ruled as
inadmissible in court. The collapse of this high-profile case was traumatic
for the police as the relatively new technique of psychological profiling
"had been an important element in the police investigation of [Rachel]
Nickell's murder almost from the start" (Wilson and Soothill, 1996). This
article considers why some murder cases attract a high profile and others
go by almost unnoticed. In brief, we argue that high-profile cases have
symbolic significance which strikes a fundamental chord in the psyche
of the nation.
Analysing material in nine British newspapers, Iwe identified reports
on about 150 pages of the sample newspapers in 1992, and on about 100
pages over an
ll-day
period after the release of Colin Stagg on
September 14, 1994. We maintain two important themes emerged from
330 The Police Journal October 1996
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