The Media and Crime

The Media and Crime

1. Williams and Dickinson

   • British newspapers devote up to 30% of their news space to crime
   • They give a distorted image of crime, criminals and policing
   • Ditton and Duffy
     • found that 46% of media reports were about violent or sexual crime, yet only 3% of all crime recorded by the police
   • The media over represents violent and sexual crime
   • The media portray criminals and victims as older than those found in the criminal justice system
     • Felson
       • "the age fallacy"
   • Media coverage exaggerated police success
   • Risk of victimisation to white, high status women
   • Media overplay extraordinary
     • Felson
       • "the dramatic fallacy"
   • Media give impresson that to commit crime, one needs to be daring and clever
     • Felson
       • "the ingenuity fallacy"

2. Schlesinger and Tumber

   • in the 60's the focus was on murders
     • in the 90's murder was less interesting to the media
   • 1990's introduced drugs, terrorism, football hooliganism and mugging into the media spotlight

3. Soothill and Walby

   • newspaper reporting of rape cases has increased
   • the representation of the offender was that of psychopathic strangers
     • "sex friends"
     • however in most cases the perpetrator and the vitime knew each other

4. Stan Cohen

   • argues that a story becomes newsworthy because of new values
   • a) Immediacy
   • b) Dramatisation
   • c) Personalisation
   • d) Higher status person and celebrities
   • e) Simplification
   • f) Novelty or unexpectedness
   • g) Risk
   • h) Violence

5. Factual Representations of Crime

   • Mandel
     • both fiction and factual reports of crime influence our view
     • From 1945 to 1984 over 10 billion crime thrillers sold
   • Surette
     • calls the representaion of fictional crime and victims - the laws of opposites
     • 1. Property crime is under represented
     • 2. Real life homocides result from sights and domestic violence
     • 3.Fictional crimes are committed by psychopaths rather than friends or family
     • 4. Fictional cops always get their man