Lisa Parr investigates the media's representation of Mark Duggan and the fatal shooting that sparked this summer's unrest.

New reports have emerged in the press this week that the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) has found no evidence that Mark Duggan, shot dead by police on August 4, was carrying a firearm. The way in which the media has handled the inquiry raises important issues about the relationship between the press, public and political institutions, which has been in the spotlight since the fatal shooting of Duggan this summer sparked riots across the UK.

The basic problem with media reports of crime is that newspapers are interested in selling stories. News consists of stories that are new and shocking, so it is essentially in the interest of newspapers to decontextualise crime and make it seem as surprising and unprecedented as possible. The media are in the business of constructing narratives but also of suppressing them. By failing to supply narratives that are based on fact and are pieced together over time, newspapers allow themselves the freedom to construct new narratives every day in the light of each new detail as it emerges.

Newspapers don’t sell information; they sell us a way of seeing ourselves. In the wake of the London riots, public figures were quick to stress their own shock and surprise. Prince Harry was “shocked and outraged”, David Cameron declared that “the whole country has been shocked”, while Sir Alex Ferguson and the Dalai Lama were also reported to be ‘shocked’. There’s nothing wrong with this reaction in and of itself, but nor is there anything worthy or noble about it, less so about declaring it in the media. A more constructive response would be to come to terms with the events as quickly as possible and to try and understand what is going on. But instead the reaction seemed somehow like a protestation of innocence, as though understanding makes us in some way complicit.

This reductive style of reporting performs the function of condensing complex social problems into black and white issues. Was Duggan armed? Did he shoot first? By posing these questions the newspapers offer compelling intrigue and an enticing detective narrative, solving the problem of engaging their readership, but failing to offer the platform for contemplation that could be a genuine contribution to social change.

One of the worst examples of this rhetoric in recent years was the dialogue that surrounded the UK invasion of Iraq. Any questions of the real motives for invasion, or of the global position the UK should occupy in the 21st century, were precluded by the one big question: were there any weapons or not? These questions place something ultimately unknowable at the heart of the narrative, offering the media endless opportunity for speculation while negating the need for analysis. In the case of Mark Duggan the debate has focused on one question: was he a ‘gangster’ or a ‘family man’?

The media treatment of Mark Duggan has been tainted with prejudice. It has been reported that his family were ‘deeply upset’ by claims he was a gangster. Duggan had no previous convictions and the main foundation for this claim seems to have been the much publicised photograph of the victim making a gun sign with his fingers. Rappers often make these kinds of signs in their music videos and I don’t think we should use that as an indication of their attitude to crime any more than we would have taken the V-sign made by Spice Girls fans in the 1990s as an indication of their feminist credentials. The question of whether Duggan was a gangster or not is really the question of whether he is a media goodie or a media baddie.

Politicians have been keen to capitalise on the emotional currency of the riots in the three months that have passed. Labour politicians have blamed Conservative welfare cuts, while the Conservatives have blamed 13 years of Labour rule. While neither party has done much to heal the social schisms that breed such violence, the petty passing of blame is helpful to no one.

Both parties are offering themselves up as vessels of change, with easy solutions to problems that lie at the heart of British society. Media rhetoric facilitates and perpetuates this discourse, offering the reader blow by blow accounts of political mud-slinging, which boil down the future of the country to an addictive whodunnit. Don’t buy it.