Published on 12, July, 2020
The first report on the BBC news tonight was about the awful stabbing of the 15 year old Holly Newton and the mention that the killer had autism. But this is just inflammatory, is it not? They did exactly the same regarding the Southport killings (there's a separate thread about that in this forum). But it doesn't take much for an ill-informed public to make the leap that people who commit awful crimes are autistic. Or that autistic people are likely to commit such crimes. Yes of course a tiny percent of people with autism commit heinous crimes just as there are a tiny percent of neurotypicals who do too. But what is the reason for reporting that the boy was autistic? I wonder, would they mention that a killer was of a different race or gender or physically disabled so readily?
BBC has done it again today, apparently we're sex offenders now: www.bbc.co.uk/.../c6p2rvxz3v6o
To be fair, you do have to scroll quite a way down before you even see a mention of autism, and it's clearly just given as context.
I'm not talking about the news headlines on website. I'm talking about when the news was read live.