142: Day 3: Out Of Sight: Missing People

Charlie Brinkhurst-Cuff (The Guardian/Reuters Institute) wrote about the disappearance of Fiona Holm and why it was overlooked by the press – and how the media chooses which missing people get coverage and which don’t.

For six days, Page 94 is covering the extraordinary stories of the investigative journalists shortlisted for this year’s Paul Foot Award, before the winner’s announcement next week.

Episode Transcript

Maisie (00:00):
Page 94, the Private Eye Podcast

Andy (00:03):
Hello and welcome back to our miniseries for the Paul Foot Awards.
We're speaking every day thisweek to a brilliant journalist or
team of journalists shortlistedfor this year's Paul Foot Award.
So without any further ado, let's geton with today's mini episode and find
out who is up for the award today.

Charlie (00:19):
My name is Charlie Brinkers Cuff and the publications that these
stories were published in with TheGuardian and the Reuters Institute
for the Study of Journalism.

Andy (00:29):
can you tell me what is the story that brought you to
the pool for awards this year?

Charlie (00:33):
So I started researching how the media reports on missing people
and how we can improve our coveragefor Reuters, and published a research
paper with them and then summarized thatfor an opinion piece of the guardian.
And then I pitched a series of longform articles also to the guardian.
Looking into some of the issues that wereraised in my research and specifically I

(00:56):
started with the story of a, woman namedFiona Hol, who went missing in 2023.
And, her body still hasn't been found.
I.

Andy (01:06):
The genesis of this story came some years ago, didn't it?
I, think you wrote about somethingthat happened when you were
working as a young reporter.
Was it at the Times

Charlie (01:16):
Yeah, so I wasn't, working as such, but I was, I was on work
experience, and I think it was in 2014I was there and I've, spoken about
this quite a lot actually in the past.
But, it is important context, Ithink because it has genuinely shaped
my whole career, this incident.

(01:38):
Basically I was on the news desk anda news editor came into the newsroom
and he announced to the newsroom thatthere was a particular missing case
that he wanted a reporter to cover.
And the way in which he describedthe reasons for covering this case
were based on the characteristicsof the, girl who'd gone missing.

(02:00):
And he said that she was pretty,that she was middle class.
he said that she was creative.
And most importantly, he said,our readers are gonna love her.
I'll always remember that he waslike, our readers gonna love her.
it was just shocking because I wassitting there as the only brown person
in the room and hearing him say so.
That they were making coveragedecisions based on something that

(02:24):
they absolutely shouldn't be based on.
and so yeah, that sort ofstayed with me for a long time.
And then as I got farther in my career,I covered a, few other missing cases and
I had a, friend or person in my widerfriendship group who also went missing.
And yeah, it's just an issuethat I care about a lot

Andy (02:42):
and the, statistics are extraordinary.
It's 170,000 people, as you'vereported, who go missing in
the UK every year, and public.
coverage of these cases is, as you'vesaid, really limited, and quite heavily
filtered through the characteristicsof the people who've gone missing
the, decisions news editors are makingabout what they think is going to

(03:03):
either cell papers or get viewers.

Charlie (03:04):
I think it's important when we talk about the 170,000
number that we recognize thatmost of those people do come home.
and I think that's one of the issuesthat we have with the coverage is that we
focus so heavily on the crime aspects of.
Missing cases that we miss.
The reasons for a lot of thesepeople going missing in the first

(03:26):
place of that, that large, figure,which is horrifically large, let's
not downplay it like the, that manypeople should not be going missing,
but only a tiny percentage of thosecases are related to crime in any way.
So you have that initial filter andthen within that you have the filter
of, the characteristics, the fact that.
If you are a, white woman, for example,you're gonna get more coverage than,

(03:50):
pretty much any other demographic if you,have the misfortune of going missing.
And I think, again, just to, to roundthis up, I think it's very important to
say that it's not that you know myself oranyone else who's working in this area.
Thinks that, there should necessarilybe less coverage of, some missing cases.
It's just about creating equity and alsointerrogating the type of coverage that

(04:11):
all of these cases get because I thinkeven for the women who are getting a
lot of coverage around their cases, thatdoesn't necessarily mean that it's helping
find them or it's helping to interrogatethe reasons why they have gone missing.
Also.

Andy (04:22):
so can you tell me a little bit about the case of Fiona Home?

Charlie (04:24):
Fiona Home went missing on the 20th of June, 2023.
she was, by all accounts, anabsolutely amazing person.
She had, Children, they adored her.
She was funny.
She was a little bit sassy.
I remember her daughter told me thatshe always put like all of the sauces

(04:46):
on the chips, like if you got like, achippy chip shop, chips, she would put
like all these different sources on them.
And her family were just so good atpainting like a picture of her that felt
so vivid and, so complex and so whole.
and she had a big family as well.
So it's, I think she was one of somethinglike, I wanna say nine siblings.
It was like a lot of them,from a Caribbean family.

(05:08):
But she had the misfortune of,meeting a man called Carl Cooper,
and she was dating him, seeing himon and off, for about six months,
I believe, before she went missing.
But the really shocking thing about hercase is that Carl Cooper had actually
been arrested the year prior in 2022 forthe murder of a woman called Naomi Hunt.

(05:33):
and she was also a black woman in herforties, like Fiona was, and she was
found, her body was found very sadly,on Valentine's Day in 2022, I believe.
So she'd been stabbed to death.
Naomi had called the police on himon multiple occasions for assault
she alleged that he was stalkingher and all this kinda stuff.
after she was found murdered, he wasarrested and then let go and then he

(05:57):
started seeing Fiona and she disappeared.
And then the police, reallyswiftly after that, arrested him
for the murder of both women.
And so I sat through the court case insummer of, 2024 and he was ultimately
convicted for both of their murders.
But obviously there's these sort ofgaping questions that emerge there.

(06:18):
Why was it that he was arrested foran Naomi's murder and then let go?
Fiona also called the policeon him on multiple occasions.
She alleged that he attackedher with a screwdriver.
I think she even showed disguise,from that incident, to her sister.
and yet she wasn't protected.
And so my story was looking into how thesystem failed Fiona, and just hopefully

(06:45):
making the reader sort of question.
Some of their own biases

Andy (06:49):
Can I ask how you perceive the point of missing persons journalism?
Because I think it's a reallyinteresting story in the way that you
are trying to deal with coverage thathasn't been written in many ways.
You're trying to point out gaps andomissions in the way that missing persons
Journalism is conducted in the uk.
what do you see as, the purpose of it?

Charlie (07:09):
That's a really brilliant question because I think that
it serves multiple purposes.
I think that what I am doing at themoment is, yeah, you're totally right.
it's not just news reporting.
It's not just.
here's information about a missing person.
Where are they?
Let's find them.
Which I think is what the purposeof a lot of missing person
coverage is and should be.

(07:30):
, But this is hoping to stay,take a step beyond that.
And that's what I think makesit investigative because it's
looking at these failings andit's asking deeper questions
about society and about the world.
but to, I guess to answer youroriginal question, I think the point of
coverage that most journalists believe.
is that they are helping to contributeto the search to find this person.
But unfortunately, the realityis that there's very limited

(07:52):
statistical evidence showing thatjournalistic coverage is useful
necessarily for helping find people.
that doesn't mean that,we shouldn't be doing it.
We absolutely should.
And there are, there's lots ofanecdotal evidence that, sometimes
our coverage can be helpful, butit does mean that we need to take a
massive step back within our industry.
and question our sort of righteousnesswhen we move in ways that are quite

(08:14):
unethical around telling these storiesand can maybe sometimes congratulate
ourselves for some of this coverage whenactually like the moral imperative for it
is not as clear cut as you might presume.

Andy (08:28):
how do you think, I, suspect there's a fairly obvious answer to this question.
How do you think the media can improvetheir coverage of, these cases?

Charlie (08:37):
Andy, I've written
a whole, spreadsheet forpeople to take a look at.
I can look, I can list it, but let me,read out maybe some top lines for you.
just to choose three things Ithink that we can do a bit better.
I think the first thing wecan do is, do a better job at
respecting privacy and sensitivity.

(08:58):
And so what I wrote is that everyonehas got the right to be forgotten.
And it could be hard, obviously,to, for journalists to get stories
over the line without family andfriends willing to give interviews.
but approaches during times of crisisshould absolutely be considerate.
And often you'll find that they're not.
And there are families that I've spokento both on and off the record who's who's
just told me about how traumatizing itwas really to have journalists approach

(09:21):
them in ways that lacked sensitivity.
I think the second thing, and Ithink what I attempted to do with
Fiona's story, is this idea ofengaging with complex stories.
So one thing that I heardagain and again from.
Reporters and, sometimes fromeditors is that they're quite wary
of stories where there's a historyof, say, substance abuse or where
the person has gone missing before.

(09:42):
there's a preference for storieswhere the disappearance is unusual,
where there's a mystery and wherethere's suspected foul play.
But what I've written here is that.
Simple stories aren't always what thepublic want or need, and I think there's
a real, strong case to be made for lookingat sort of some of these bigger, broader,
thematic stories that come out of those170,000 people that go missing each year.

(10:02):
and then the final thing.
I think, and yeah, just I guessit's good to mention them, is, just
highlighting support available tomissing people and their loved ones.
obviously there's a really brilliantcharity called Missing People,
and it's a great resource and, Ibelieve can and should be used.
Similarly to the way that the Samaritansare used for suicide reporting.
missing people.

(10:23):
They've got lots of resources availableonline and, they've also come up
up with their own guidelines forjournalists, to use in the newsroom
if they have any sort of questionsor thoughts about missing people.
And they're also very open tohaving phone calls with us and,
chatting through stories with us.
So that's good as well.

Andy (10:38):
we are coming to the end of our time.
There's just one more question, which I,try and ask at the end of all of these,
which is, where does the story go next?

Charlie (10:45):
We're still awaiting the results of the I-O-I-O-P-C investigation, there
were allegations of misconduct withinthe police service that there was a
particularly shocking thing, whichis that, after Fiona disappeared, a
person, anonymous person called intothe police service and said, I believe
that Carl Cooper has murdered Fiona, andthis is where he's buried her bo body.

(11:08):
And that phone call wasdismissed as a hoax.
And just repeated failings throughout,this case, throughout fairness
case and throughout Naomi's case.
So it'll be really interesting tosee what the IOPC has to say and I'm
keeping a sort of close eye on them.
And then beyond that, I thinkin terms of my wider work around
missing, it's about data research.

(11:29):
It's about inter interrogating otherstories around missing, it's about
looking at the social is issues thatare pervasive if around missing.
So would that be children in care homes?
Would that be homelessness?
this is part of a much bigger storyto do with the disintegration of
the social fabric, that we live in.

(11:50):
And, yeah, I really want to just keep oninvestigating these stories and telling
them my, the very best of my ability.

Andy (11:57):
thank you so much for your time and congratulations
again on your shortlisting.
Thank you,

Charlie (12:00):
Thank you.
Thank you so much.

Andy (12:02):
Thanks so much to Charlie.
Extraordinary story there.
Really interesting aboutthe way the media operates.
We will be back againtomorrow with episode four.
See you then.