Write a commentAs a society we seem to thrive on living in fear and there’s nothing quite like talk of an attempted child abduction to really add coals to the fire.
What made me think of this was the reporting by some media outlets of last Friday’s incident involving a car in Talbot Street in Newry inferring that it was a potential child abduction attempt! Of course this contributes to the ever increasing fear phenomena in our midst and the fact that it isn’t true is neither here nor there as it will go down in history as a “fact” and another reason to see Newry as an unsafe place to let your children out in!
The Police issued a statement on the incident yesterday “Police in Newry are appealing for information following an attempted hijacking on Friday, 20 February.” and confirmed to Newry.ie that there is no indication that it was an attempted child abduction. By the way I’m not saying that hijacking is any less traumatic for the people involved, far from it.
The fear factor whether it’s thought too dangerous to walk down the street at night or it’s unsafe to let your children out to play or we aren’t safe in our own homes or Hitchhiking’s too dangerous, or Drugs are killing our Children (but Alcohol isn’t of course!) All these only contribute to a heightened anxiety in our psyche. Many of these are fears based on very little fact and if you want to take fear to a new level you could say it’s much too dangerous to cross the road as many more people have been killed or injured in our area through road traffic collisions than by abductions.
I would hazard a guess that Newry City is most likely as safe/ as dangerous a place to live in as it was 40 years ago, maybe sometime I’ll check the statistics out!
The Media (of which Newry.ie is part of course) tend to sensationalise the news, that’s after all how they sell copies or attract visitors but I can’t help thinking that it’s the media that leads to many of the irrational fears that are out there much more that the actual incidents they were reporting on!
