The National Youth Agency: Comment - You can't trust what you readin the papers

Newspaper editors have agendas; headlines are written by subeditors, not reporters. Their primary purpose is to sell a paper, not to inform, or inspire life in a democracy. And the young don't buy newspapers.

There is, in any case, a drift away from print media; indeed from news altogether, except at moments of crisis. Yet we need to be concerned about how the young are portrayed. Negative images both fuel and feed off public and political concerns and amplify moral panics.

The result is too often bad law as, for example, in the Antisocial Behaviour Act and its impact on young people. There is little attempt to get behind the headlines and to explain the condition of the young and the circumstances of their lives. Few write, for instance, of the unholy alliance between drinks manufacturers, PR companies and urban regenerators seeking a 24/7 commercial quarter which has done so much to create a culture of town centre binge drinking. It is easier just to run a Shop-A-Yob campaign to demonise individuals - and, perhaps, to add to their local status as tearaways.