Introduction

During 2013 and 2014, a period of severe ill-health interrupted my research. When I was well enough to go back into the field, I decided to touch base with a couple of contacts to review my initial research findings and to see if the impasse between the police and the national news media was still in place or if relations had thawed since I carried out my first interviews. To my surprise, however, my contacts sounded even more bleak than they had previously about police and media relations and about their ability to carry out their Fourth Estate role. They suggested that part of this was due to the continuing restrictions on both official and unofficial press contact, but they also identified another factor contributing to the breakdown in police/news media relations – the police’s newfound interest in and use of social media.

In 2011 and 2012, when I carried out my initial interviews with press and senior police officers and with national crime journalists, the use of social media and new digital technologies was still in its infancy. The older journalists I spoke to initially were dismissive and suggested that social media could never be a replacement for making face-to-face contacts, while the younger journalists were enthusiastic about the potential of social media for researching and crowdsourcing stories. The police press officers I interviewed also had mixed responses; while some saw social media as a way of communicating more directly with the public than ever before, particularly communities who might not read mainstream news, others suggested pitfalls in terms of spreading disinformation to the public.

However, three years on from these interviews, my reporter contacts had a more cynical view of the police’s interest in social media, arguing that it allowed the police to control the flow of information more tightly than ever before. They told me that, although crime incidents were being reported daily on the Metropolitan Police’s Twitter feed and news website, when they rang the Press Bureau for background information or to speak to investigating officers, they were invariably fobbed off. One reporter commented succinctly: