Opinion: The real reason you should hate Channel 4’s James Bulger documentary

Channel 4 recently provoked a huge backlash from Liverpool residents for its new documentary, “The Bulger Killers: Was Justice Done?”, because many people, including Denise Fergus herself, felt that it ‘sympathised’ with the two murderers.

People thought that the documentary seemed to suggest that the killers should not have been put through a criminal trial, as the interviewers spoke to Laurence Lee, Venables’ solicitor, and Dominic Lloyd, who defended Thompson’s solicitor, as well as journalists and other people at the trial.

In the documentary, the interviewees consider how these 10 year old children came to do such a terrible thing, and it’d discussed quite a lot by interviewees whether or not it was ethical to try them as adults.

Dominic Lloyd stated that sentencing these 10 year old children to life in prison is the “contrary” of rehabilitation, and it was not “something I’m comfortable with at all”.

So many people were angry at the documentary, and I don’t understand their reasoning.

I fully understand how awful the crime was, and how 8 years for murder is preposterous, but is it really that bad to give people an alternative viewpoint? That’s our job, as journalists, to show all aspects of a story and remain objective.

I don’t personally agree with a lot of what was said in the documentary, but I appreciate the fact that the producers have tried to consider what could be wrong with putting children through a trail like that; it presents a balance to the story, when everyone else seems to be in agreement that they should have had their hands cut off.

The law that states criminal responsibility starts at age 10 is a law is hundreds of years old and hasn’t caught up with modern day scientific evidence that suggests our brains aren’t fully developed until we’re 25 — the documentary is only trying to open a dialogue about how we deal with children who commit severe crimes.

I wouldn’t consider this to be sympathising with ANYONE — it’s simply trying to consider all sides of the case.

And, may I add, the ITV documentary that Trevor McDonald recently presented also spoke to someone who seemed to hold this viewpoint.

There was a woman who sat with the parents of one of the killers, and in the documentary, she is quoted as saying, “they were only ten”.

Yet, there was no outrage towards ITV; no snide comments on twitter; no news stories; no snide comment articles.

There’s one thing that I haven’t seen many people talk about, and it’s the REAL reason we should be outraged at Channel 4.

The biggest travesty this documentary commits is the fact that Channel 4 decider to interview Kelvin MacKenzie, who was the editor for The S*n newspaper when they printed absurd lies about Liverpool fans during the aftermath of the Hillsborough disaster.

For that man, who has caused so much damage and trauma to the people of Liverpool, and continues to today, to be put on a pedastal to talk about an issue severely shook Liverpool, is, quite frankly, disgusting.

There were many other journalists that could have been featured in this documentary — both The Echo and The Mirror covered the story rigorously, but so did every other publication in the country.

I understand that editors of The S*n were the ones who handed a petition that was signed over 270,000 times to the then Home Secretry in 2003, but the producers of this documentary were NOT required to interview Kelvin MacKenzie for it.

Please stop getting annoyed at journalists just trying to do their job by adding to the conversation about societey.

People need to stop reacting emotionally and just try to listen — we need to consider alternative viewpoints instead of throwing a fit whenever someone says something we don’t particularly agree with.

We NEED to keep an open dialogue in order for us to evolve — to get better as people…

Just not with Kelvin MacKenzie…