Ian Blair, Britain's most senior policeman, apologised today for suggesting that media coverage of the Soham murders was exaggerated because of "institutional racism" in the press.
The Metropolitan Police Commissioner said yesterday that few people could understand why the murders of the schoolgirls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman by their school's caretaker became the biggest story in Britain in the summer of 2002.
He raised the case during a speech to the Metropolitan Police Authority to illustrate a general point that news organisations magnify their coverage when the victims are white and middle-class.
Today, after a savaging from the newspapers he sought to upbraid, he accepted that his use of the schoolgirls' murders to score political points could be seen as insensitive.
He told the BBC: "First of all, I obviously have to unreservedly apologise to anyone connected to the Soham murders, especially the parents of Holly and Jessica, for reigniting the story. It was not intended to diminish the significance of this dreadful crime, which is exactly how I described it yesterday."
But Sir Ian repeated his concerns that although the media played a crucial role in the fight against crime, it was selective in those stories which it to chose to pursue and those which end up as "a paragraph on page 97". He said that the forgotten stories frequently involved the black and Asian community.
"The thing about race and gender is very clear in the way things are reported, but the other thing I was raising is why a particular crime strikes at the national psyche and we have to respond to that public concern," the Commissioner said.
"There are lots of murders of people that do not get that kind of coverage - sometimes they do, sometimes they just don’t. Putting it bluntly, it is a quiet news day, it’s August, these things can blow up."
He said that the murder of Tom ap Rhys Price, the white City lawyer stabbed near his home in North London, was a "terrible" case, but he compared it with the killing of an Asian man by two car thieves in East London, a black woman chopped to pieces in South London and a black man shot in North London.
"They [the black and Asian victims] get a paragraph on page 97. Reporting of murders in minority communities is not of interest to the mainstream media."
There was "no doubt", he said, that race had an impact on the amount of coverage from the media. Exceptions included the murders of two sisters in Birmingham on New Year’s Eve 2003, the murder of black teenager Stephen Lawrence and the schoolboy Damilola Taylor.
Sir Ian's remarks came during a discussion at the Metropolitan Police Authority (MPA), the body which oversees his force, over whether more resources were allocated to high profile murders.
This, he insisted, was a "fair discussion" to have at a public meeting, particularly as it was in response to concerns raised by the deputy chair of the authority over the issue.
The commissioner added: "There are a large number of murders inside the black community that get almost no coverage at all."
"What I want the media to do is to understand the dynamics of how different minority communities feel about the coverage given to events in their communities and to assist us as much as they can and they do assist us as much as they can. The last thing I need is a war with the media."
The Metropolitan Police was itself accused of "institutional racism" following an inquiry into its handling of the murder of Stephen Lawrence, a black teenager.
Criticism of Sir Ian’s remarks over Soham came from Bob McLachlan, a former head of the Met’s paedophile unit, who told The Sun: "Sir Ian Blair has abused the memory of those two girls for his own political purpose.
"He has totally lost the plot. How can this man lead people to devote their lives to protecting children? Soham was rightly a big story. Society was horrified."
The Daily Mail responded by printing a series of front pages featuring the murders of Stephen Lawrence, Abdul Bhatti, Damilola Taylor, Charlene Ellis and Letisha Shakespeare, Danielle Deccan and Anthony Walker, all black or Asian teenagers or children.
The commissioner, who reaches his first year in office next week, is already under investigation by the Independent Police Complaints Commission for comments after the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes last year. The killing of the Brazilian electrician as a suspected terrorist by Metropolitan Police also received widespread publicity.
Ken Livingstone, the London Mayor, who was cleared of misconduct earlier this month after likening a Jewish reporter to a concentration camp guard, said: "Racism in the media, as elsewhere, cannot be ignored."
"Murders and attacks on black and Asian people - with one or two very obvious exceptions - simply do not dominate the news agenda in the same way as many of those affecting white people," he said.
Cindy Butts, deputy chair of the Metropolitan Police Authority, whose question at yesterday’s meeting sparked Sir Ian’s comments, said the Commissioner had been "right" to raise the issue.
She said that there were nine other murders in the same week as Mr ap Rhys Pryce was stabbed to death. "We did not see any coverage of those murders in the press and I beg the question as to whether or not this actually has an effect on the way in which the Met carries out investigations."
Ms Butts said she "quite frankly" agreed that cases involving white, middle-class victims got more coverage than those with people from ethnic communities. "He is right in saying it. Personally I would not blanketly accuse the press of being institutionally racist," she said.
The former Sun editor, David Yelland, said that the media was interested in "news value" rather than race. "How interested will the readers be of my newspaper or the listeners to my radio programme or whatever," he said
"Newspaper and news organisations can stand accused of many things and I certainly would not sit here and defend them against anything but I actually think he is way out, he is simply wrong."
The chair of the MPA, Len Duvall, said the Met had confirmed it was "categorically untrue" that it targeted more resources at high-profile stories.
"Thomas Rhys Pryce’s murder was tragic and horrific, but so were the other heinous murders committed at that time," he said.
"During that period the Met were also investigating six other murders including Balbir Matharu, who was run over when he confronted people breaking into his car, two domestic murders and two males who were stabbed.
"The question remains as to why just one of these horrific crimes received mass media coverage.
"The ensuing media furore has highlighted the necessity for a reasoned mature debate about policing and the press. This is one which will be taken forward by the Authority at the earliest possible opportunity."
Jessica Chapman and Holly Wells, both aged ten, were murdered by Huntley in August 2002. Police were later criticised for their handling of the search for the girls, failings over the vetting of Huntley for his job and over intelligence that showed his history of sex assaults on young girls.
