Violent
Disagreement
Brits Outraged Over Crime Report
June 29 — Life in Britain is more
violent than in the United States?
That’s absurd, British officials
say, reacting to an American television report that said
Britain was one of the most violent urban societies in
the Western world.
The CBS report said people in
Britain were more likely to be burgled, twice as likely
to be robbed and two and a half times more likely to be
assaulted than in the United States.
Tourism chiefs, fearing the
report could damage the country’s multibillion-dollar
tourism industry, rushed to defend Britain as one of the
safest places in the world.
Government officials also
pooh-poohed the report, with Home Office Minister
Charles Clarke calling it “absolute nonsense.”
“Violent crime is a very
serious issue in this country and needs to be very
seriously addressed … but I don’t think it’s
helped by the trivialized comparisons the CBS engaged
in,” Clarke told the BBC.
Except for Murder
CBS News anchorman Dan Rather
introduced the report, saying many Americans have an
image of Britain as a civilized island free from crime
and ugliness — but in fact, “the UK has a crime
problem and, believe it or not, except for murder,
theirs is worse than ours.”
The report went on to describe
violence by Britain’s notorious soccer hooligans as
“only the tip of the iceberg.” CBS London
correspondent Tom Fenton said: “Police crime
statistics are a sham. Only one in four assaults ever
gets recorded here.”
And he said the latest study
showed that “violent crime is on the rise in Britain,
while in America it has been going down for 20 years.”
Stirring a Hornet’s Nest
British news outlets gave prominence
to the CBS report.
A British Tourist Authority
spokesman told London’s Guardian newspaper that the
report conveyed a worrying misconception. “Britain has
always been seen as a civilized, multicultural society
with relatively low levels of crime,” the spokesman
said.
The London Tourist Board said in
a statement that the CBS report presented “an image of
crime in Britain which is distinctly at odds with
London’s reputation as one of the safest, friendliest
cities in the world.”
Several newspaper Web sites ran
profiles of Fenton, pointing out that the correspondent
had once been victimized by London thieves.
“He and his wife have been
victims of crime twice in the 21years since they came to
Britain, leaving them with a possible axe to grind,”
wrote the Times of London.
The BBC Web site ran an article
saying Americans had a “rose-colored view” of
Britain.
“The fact we have criminals at
all seems to alarm some Americans,” it said.
Other news outlets were equally
sarcastic, but less wary of the report’s possible
effects on tourism.
“What a shocking thought. The
Tube [subway] without obese loud-mouths from Baton
Rouge,” wrote Evening Standard columnist Matthew
Norman.
ABCNEWS.com’s Andrew Chang and
Reuters contributed to this report.
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