Posts Tagged ‘Home Office’
Prostitutes vs. politicians
Cindy is a 38-year-old divorced mother of three. She supports her family singlehandedly and describes herself as a successful businesswoman.
But Cindy’s ‘business’ could come under threat if the 2009 Policing and Crime Bill passes later this year. She works as a prostitute from a small North London premises, and worries that she may be forced out of the relative safety of the brothel and onto the streets under the proposed bill, which extends closure orders to sex-work establishments.
The bill, which could become law within months, has proved extremely contentious. As well as the extension of closure orders – which were originally designed to deal with crack houses – it creates a new offence of paying for sex with a person ‘controlled for gain,’ punishable with a fine of up to £1,000, and provisions to reclassify lap-dancing venues as ’sex-encounter’ establishments.
The Home Office argue that the bill, championed by Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, will cut demand in the sex industry and help to reduce the trafficking of women to work as prostitutes in Britain.
But many prostitutes like Cindy believe that it would further stigmatise sex-work and make their lives more dangerous. “Forcing brothels to close would push prostitution further underground and we will have to take more risks to get work,” says Cindy. “I have lots of repeat clients who I have built up trust with, and criminalisation will scare these men away.”
The English Collective of Prostitutes says that women will face much greater risks if the bill passes. Since the clients of sex workers were criminalised in Scotland in October 2007, they say, the number of assaults on prostitutes has soared, with 126 attacks on prostitute women reported to one project in 2007, compared to 66 in 2006.
English Collective of Prostitutes protest
And according to Allan Gibson, head of the anti-trafficking unit at the Metropolitan police, criminalising clients would be very difficult to enforce because it is hard to know whether sex workers are actually ‘controlled for gain’ by a third party, or not.
Harriet Harman, Minister for Women and Equality, claims that 85 per cent of women prostitutes in Britain are ‘controlled’ by pimps or traffickers, based on ‘anecdotal’ evidence, but the Collective say that this figure is hugely exaggerated. What is more, they say, it could lead to workers in the sex industry being falsely labelled as traffickers.
Journalism and PR: A complicated relationship
Visiting the Home Office with Danny Shaw (BBC Home Affairs Correspondent) last week was an incredibly revealing insight into the symbiotic relationship between journalism and PR.
It is a relationship which is commonly oversimplified, with damaging effects. As journalists we are taught not to give much weight to the words of PRs, who have vested interests and their own agendas. Journalism, we believe, is about revealing the truth and increasing public access to information, whilst PR is about spinning the news, obscuring information, and covering up scandal.
Yet both industries are far more complicated than this. Government Press Offices have a public service element in the same way as newspapers do; one of the primary functions of the Home Office Press Office is to inform the public about what the Government is doing in their name. And, as Civil Servants, Government Press Officers are duty-bound to present information in an unpartisan way – which cannot be said about most newspapers. Naturally, their work always endeavours to show the Home Office in a positive light, but a healthy dose of journalistic scepticism is all that is needed to see through this.
On the other side of the coin, anyone who has read Nick Davies’ candid exposé of journalism, Flat Earth News, will be aware that journalistic ideals – even at the most well-respected publications – can go astray. Journalists too may have vested interests, partiality or, quite simply, encounter logistical constraints which impede honest and accurate reporting. Noam Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent deals with this theme for the American media.
Rather, then, than blindly distrusting PRs it is perhaps better to look at all sources with a critical eye – whether they come from PRs or from fellow journalists.
