by WarrenH » Thu 27 May, 2010 5:39 am
Can I suggest how innocently and then not-so-innocently these things work. The word MISSING is crucial.
Just say, a parent needs to contact one of the children on the walk. The parent goes to the school firstly and then the school advises the parent to contact the police. The parent says, "We need to contact our Little Jimmy because his Grandmother has been taken to hospital and is doing poorly, we would like him to know."
The police say, "If he is out of range, there is little we can do. We can't go looking for Little Jimmy, we don't have the manpower. The only option is we will notify the police media branch. They will put out a press release and hopefully a member of the public will run into Little Jimmy and tell him to contact the police immediately." The parents then say, "OK, that sounds like a good idea." The media then sits on the police press release. The media doesn't waste space on this non-story yet. Nor do they give-out unpaid personal ads to the public.
A few days go by. No one runs into Little Jimmy. Someone in the media asks the police media branch," Has Little Jimmy been in touch with the police yet." The police say,"Oh no, he is still on the walk, we aren't aren't concerned."
It is now SCHOOL GROUP MISSING IN THE BLUE MOUNTAINS!!! How inconvenient of Little Jimmy not to be obvious to a member of the public, when no one in the group knew that Little Jimmy needed to be obvious.
The media frenzy has now started for the MISSING child ... no, make that an entire MISSING group! A story has to be fabricated to suit the spectacular headlines. If it rained a bit overnight, in the canyons, that's a big win for the media. CONCERN FOR MISSING SCHOOL GROUP - FLASH FLOOD. There is 100m distance between the first walkers and the stragglers (which is quite good on a DofE walk) ... MISSING SCHOOL GROUP SPLIT
Something as simple as, "We need to contact our Little Jimmy," is all it will take. Don't call me cynical, call me experienced.
Warren.
Last edited by
WarrenH on Thu 27 May, 2010 7:29 am, edited 1 time in total.