That was back in November. Contrast it with the death earlier this month of Ashley Hedger, 16, after a stabbing in a London street. The Times and The Guardian newspapers both reported it as a paragraph in their "news in brief" sections. Hedger didn't get a mention in The Independent or The Daily Telegraph. The Sun summed up the killing in 21 words on page 23. The Mirror didn't report it.
What's the difference? Perhaps simply that in November journalists didn't realise how common knives are. Since then they've noticed that stabbings aren't particularly unusual.
Here are just some of the incidents reported in the first fortnight of this month: a 17-year-old was forced into a car in Cambridge and stabbed, a 14-year-old was stabbed outside a school in High Wycombe, a 17-year-old was stabbed in the chest during a street disturbance in Wolston, near Rugby, and a 15-year-old was stabbed four times as he got out of a taxi in Plymouth. No wonder hacks are confused ...
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