I would like to complain about the inclusion of the interview with Kelly Fletcher on The Today Programme broadcast on 24/04/2014. The interview was introduced by Mishal Husain saying that a woman was being questioned on suspicion of murdering her three children, who had a c...ondition believed to be SMA. She then said that the case had put focus on a very little known about condition. The interview consisted of an account from Kelly whose daughter diagnosed with SMA had died age two. Much was made of the limited life expectancy of children with this particular condition. The interview also delved into how difficult it was to raise a child with SMA, with at one point Husain asking “What did you see her go through?” and stating that Kelly herself “must have gone through intense emotional difficulty.”
It was inappropriate, verging on dangerous, to link this interview with the New Maiden murders in the way the programme did. The focus of the interview was highly problematic. The emphasis on the ‘intense’ strain of having a child with this condition set up a potential narrative context of the New Maiden murders. The context that a mother of a child with SMA would “have gone through intense emotional difficulty” presents the spurious inference that this is a factor in the murder case, something that is not yet known. The very fact that the programme chose to conduct the interview, exploring the difficulties of the disability, in itself highlights the victims’ medical condition as a crucial factor in the story, when it objectively is not. I invite you to compare coverage of this case to other child murders and would suggest a very different tone is taken when the child victims are non-disabled.
By highlighting the difficulties of caring for one particular child with SMA, Lilly, is Today not by inference suggesting that these same difficulties can be presumed to have been a factor in the children murdered in New Maiden? And wasn’t the programme doing this, even before the mother/suspect in the case was charged with any crime, and indeed entered a plea? And isn’t this an unconscionable inference to make in the light that they had already stated that the children involved are only “believed” to have SMA?
How many other interviews do Today conduct where the life expectancy, of persons deemed to be comparable to murder victims, is discussed? If an elderly person is murdered are details of their peers’ similar but unrelated life expectancy, presented as pertinent to the reporting of the crime?
One possible defence of the interview being on the programme on that particular day would be to explain to the audience what the term SMA meant when mentioned in the news report. However they failed to give a clear picture of the disability and although Mishal stressed that Lilly’s condition was type 1 SMA the severest form, they did not explore cases that don’t end in childhood death. Baroness Jane Campbell, member of the House of Lords, has SMA and her parents were told that she would not live beyond the age of 2. I personally have two friends who have lived into their 30’s with the condition and Baroness Jane Campbell happens to be 55. As they did not seem able to confirm that the children definitely had SMA it seems curious that Today chose to highlight the disability in the limited way they did, by interviewing a mother of a deceased child who had the disability, rather than an adult who lives with the impairment. Surely the latter would be more useful if the real purpose of the interview was to highlight the impairment, rather than to give a dubious context to the murder case the programme was also reporting. Do you accept the choice of the interviewee acted to conflate the experience of Kelly with the unknown circumstances of the New Maiden murder suspect, instead of giving a complete picture of what differing outcomes a SMA diagnosis can be?
I think the inclusion of this interview in this particular edition of the Today Programme was ill-advised for the reasons I have already explained. These things matter. How murders of disabled people get reported relate directly to the way a disabled person’s life, and it’s worth, is perceived by the general public. Any inconsistences which occur when reporting the murder of a disabled victim compared to the reports of other murder cases are dangerous for the disabled community as a whole. A mere hint of a mercy killing narrative, or indeed a mother pushed to the edge angle, are both extremely irresponsible, when the only evidence to support them is the fact that the murder victims are disabled. Any speculation of this kind, in the New Maiden case, is cowboy journalism and at this point in the criminal investigation is highly inappropriate
