Tuesday, February 27, 2007

headline framing - 3 quick approaches/angles

heres the approximate headline, main news recap. soundbite as heard on bbc news 24:

"violent assaults on nhs staff cost the taxpayer ~ £100 million p.a."

here is an example of a headline text and article from the beeb:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6395183.stm

angles

a]
i] approx. £1.66 per capita p.a.
[ if population is 60 million]
ii] approx. £5.00 per taxpayer p.a.
[ if there are 20 million taxpayers]

b]
i] how much money should be allocated/spent to prevent it?
100 million?, 10 million?
ii] will the first 10% of the assaults be easier to reduce than the last 10%?
[this is a real problem for policy generally],
[smart policies talk about reduction percentages -
both avoiding and all but admitting this problem]
iii] how much money is already allocated to hospital security arrangements? - if outsourced to non nhs concerns - what do the contracts look like.
iv] what percentage of total hospitals budget is 100 million?
v] how would these figures break down to an example individual hospital?
vi] etc

c]
i] the most interesting angle concerns the presentation of assault on staff with cost.
Presumably in part, let us hope, the reason cost is presented in association is to lend weight to the idea that assaulting health staff is a bad thing.
ii] question : what "british value" is being encouraged by this association?
iii] is the beeb approach, in associating assault with cost, reflecting accurately the way the population understands/the problem? if not why not.
iv] ... and these are obviously over-extrapolated and somewhat caricatured to illustrate a cultural point - imagine the following soundbites on the main headlines recap:

"a report published today says that satanic-ritual-child-sex-abuse costs the social services/taxpayer £158 million per year."

"a report published today says that robbery and violent beating of the elderly costs the social services/taxpayer £123 million pounds per year."

"a report published today says that violent assaults on persons based solely on the colour of their skin costs the taxpayer £234 million pounds per year."

It seems there is a mix of financial and moral/legal/ethical angle in the bbc article as a whole
- my view is that the financial implications are not explored fully and that the moral/legal/ethical concerns for the staff, due to the violent behaviour of certain individual patients, are seriously let down by the framing in the headline.

d]
the web link to nhs policy is undifferentiated as displayed on the bbc article
[ i bet they have little experience of tracing/questioning an inexplicably reduced or delayed benefit ]
- the guardian, in its better moments, would have done better here.

e.g. explicit links to :

-the zero tolerance page/policy/speech
- security and extra security page policy speech
-absenteeism due to violence costs info
-training of staff info
-legal bills and processes info
-contract info in relation to security provision
-a next level of discussion of implication for future govt or institutional policy moves
-access to the raw data that the 2% prosecution figure comes from [albeit with names removed ]
-methodology/ raw data for estimated 100million cost

and they really should have had a comments link.

the article without the links - is a newsround article.

-realitystructure

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