Introduction

The murder of George Floyd in May 2020 brought about calls to defund the police on both sides of the Atlantic. But it also brought about calls to radically overhaul the content of crime reporting; that it was racist, classist and sexist and created harms for marginalised and stigmatised communities through its coverage of them. The last two chapters have discussed how The Bristol Cable, the Bureau Local and The Bureau for Investigative Journalism have attempted to address the misrepresentation of stigmatised or marginalised communities through working with these communities in the reporting of their stories. But in the United Kingdom, there is another problem facing legacy crime journalists – the breakdown of relationships between the national press and the MPS.

This chapter begins by summarising the key findings of this study. It then moves on to a final discussion of the future of crime and investigative reporting in the United Kingdom; what lessons can be learned by legacy media from the work of the non-profits; and why this breakdown in police/news media relations is not only harmful for the press and the public, but also for the MPS.

In 2019, eight years after the original phone-hacking scandal and seven years after the publication of the Leveson and Filkin Reports (2012), I attended another conference run by the Centre for Investigative Journalism at Goldsmiths College, University of London. One of the talks was entitled ‘A Life in Crime’; it featured Fiona Hamilton, Crime and Security Editor at The Times, and freelance journalist, Michael Gillard, being interviewed by author and crime journalist, Duncan Campbell.

Hamilton started her talk by describing what she termed the ‘Golden Age of Crime Reporting’, an era predating the Leveson and Filkin Reports (2012), in which police officers were happy to help crime journalists, particularly when reporting on sensitive issues such as terrorism; and when there were, according to Hamilton, monthly briefings by the MPS Commissioners.