Radio Ham

This BBC story tells the tragic case of two young children, aged 7 and 5,  who died in a house fire over the weekend in Eastbourne. Not surprisingly all the newspapers have covered the story; here is the result of the Google News search on the matter, currently showing 42 reports.

Though it all, however, one report stands out. While the Press Association reports children killed in house blaze, Reuters that two young children die in house fire, The Independent that young boys die in house blaze, The Guardian that brothers killed in house blaze, The Times that brothers die in house fire after mother runs for help and door slams shut behind her, and all other headlines are variations on that tragic theme, the supposedly reputable Daily Telegragh (the UK’s only remaining broadsheet, no less) decides to run with police refuse to allow mother to lay flowers at death scene of her young sons, with the follow up line “The mother of two young children killed in a fire at their family home has been marched away by police after trying to lay flowers on her own doorstep.”

How utterley pathetic. I know I am biased, and probably react in a mini fit of pique when I see the police criticised (unless it is me doing the criticising, which was partly the point of this blog), but to turn this terrible incident into a bash the police piece is absurd. For the record, the Telegragh reports that

witnesses said that [the mother] became hysterical when police told her she could not pass a cordon while forensics teams worked at the property…Mrs Goldsmith and members of her family then hit out at officers, according to witnesses, and were led back to their car and advised to leave. A forensic investigator finally retrieved the bunch of flowers, which had been dropped on the road, and placed it on the doorstep behind the cordon.

Regretable as it is, it is surely right to let the forensics team complete their work: and if that means the mother has to wait a while before putting flowers at the house then that seems a worthwhile wait if it potentially means finding evidence in what may have been an arson.

But I don’t blame the mothers actions, who is certainly acting out of the most awful sense of grief. I blame the Telegragh for turning a sad no-win situation into an anti-police diatribe, with the emotive use of the word word “marched” to describe how the police led the mother way. It seems to me that based on the facts as given the police acted correctly in a difficult situation; for the Telegragh to editorialise and imply otherwise, and to do so in a way that none of the tabloids have copied, suggests the Telegragh is a broadsheet only in design, not of mind.