Different Perceptions
Posted: Thu 5 March, 2009 Filed under: Cynicism, News, Thoughts 1 Comment »Yesterday, a man was convicted of killing a 23-month-old baby. Robert Cunningham, 23, had denied murdering Brandon Muir, who died in Dundee in March 2008 after suffering more than 40 injuries, including broken ribs and a ruptured intestine. During the trial, medical experts said the injuries had been caused by a “massive blow” to his stomach area.
Robert Cunningham was, according to the media reports, a heroin addict – and Brandon Muir’s mother was a heroin addict and prostitute. As such, one assumes that the child was listed as being on an “at risk” register with social services, and indeed had been in contact with social workers two days before his death.
In the much more famous “Baby P” case, the child had been seen over 60 times by social workers during it’s 17-month life.
So why did Baby P get so much media coverage and hysteria, and Brandon Muir received little to no coverage? (except for basic reporting of the court case)
I wonder if it’s because Baby P was in London, whereas Brandon Muir was up in Tayside, Scotland? Or would that just (again) be me being horrifically cynical?
There is so much that is not reported. Did you read of Edinburgh social services taking a little boy and his little sister away from the single parent mother attempting to come off heroin? That social services refused the children to go to the grandparents? That instead: social services handed the children for adoption to 2 male homosexuals? No? That happened January 2009 and only in England (Daily Mail, English edition) was it published (see Littlejohn’s Column for scathing commentary).
By the way, the Scottish “government” approves such adoptions despite the vast majority of Scots being wholly opposed to it. In this case the children were sobbing when taken from the grandparents – who were threatened by the social workers that if they protested in any way, they would never ever see the children again.