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Crime and the Media

Media Representations of
Crime

• C+D make up a large proportion of news coverage
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However, while the news media show a keen interest in crime, they give a distorted image of crime, criminals and policing
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E
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Ditton + Duffy found that 46% of media reports were about violent or sexual
crimes, yet these made up only 3% of all crimes recorded by the police
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Felson
calls this the ‘age fallacy’
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Partly because police are a major source of crime stories + want to present
themselves in a good light +partly because media over-represents violent crime, which has a higher clear-up rate than property crime
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Ø Crime is reported as a series of separate events without structure and without examining underlying causes
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Similarly, media
images lead us to believe that to commit crime (and to solve it) one needs to be daring and clever- the ‘ingenuity fallacy’
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E
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Schlesinger+ Tumber found that in the 1960s
the focus had been o murders and petty crime, but by the 1990s murder and petty crime were of less interest to the media
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• By the 1990s, reporting had also widened to include drugs, child abuse, terrorism, football hooliganism and mugging
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E
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Soothill +Walby found that newspaper reporting of rape
cases increased from under 1/4 of all cases in 1951 to over 1/3 in 1985
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While these do occur, they are the exception rather than the rule- in most cases perpetrator is
known to victim
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That is, news does not simply
exist ‘out there’ waiting to be gathered in+ written by the journalist
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• As Cohen and Young note, news is not discovered but manufactured
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News values are criteria by which journalists + editors decide whether a story is newsworthy
enough to make it into newspaper/ news bulletin
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Key news values
influencing the selection of crime stories include:
Ø Immediacy
Ø Dramatisation- action and excitement
Ø Personalisation- human interest stories about individuals
Ø Higher-status persons and ‘celebrities’
Ø Simplification- eliminating shades of grey
Ø Novelty or unexpectedness- a new angle
Ø Risk- victim-centred stories about vulnerability and fear
Ø Violence- especially visible and spectacular acts
• One reason the media give so much coverage to crime is that news focuses on the unusual and extraordinary+ this makes
deviance newsworthy almost by definition, as it is abnormal behaviour
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• For example, Mandel estimates that from 1945 to 1984, over 10 billion crime thrillers were sold worldwide,
while about 25% of prime time TV and 20% of films are crime shows or movies
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ØProperty crime is under-represented,while violence/drugs/sex crimes are over-represented
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ØFictional sex crimes are committed by psychopathic strangers, not acquaintances
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ØFictional cops usually get their man
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• Secondly, there is an increasing tendency to show police as corrupt, brutal and as less successful
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The Media as a Cause of Crime

• There has been concern that media has a negative effect on attitudes,values+behaviour- especially of groups thought to
be most susceptible to influence, such as young, lower classes + uneducated
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More recently, rap lyrics + computer games such as Grand Theft Auto have been
criticised for encouraging violence + criminality
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These include:
Ø Imitation- by providing deviant role models, resulting in ‘copycat’ behaviour
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Ø Desensitisation e
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through repeated viewing of violence
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Ø As a target for crime e
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theft of plasma TVs
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Ø By portraying the police as incompetent
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• As a result of fears about the possible negative effects of the media on their audiences, thousands of studies have been
conducted
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• As Schramm et al say in relation to effects of viewing on children: “for some children, under some conditions, some TV is
harmful
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”
• However, as Livingstone notes, despite such conclusions, people continue to be preoccupied with effects of the media on
children because of our desire to regard childhood as a time of uncontaminated innocence in the private sphere
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• There is therefore concern that the media may be distorting the public’s impression of crime and
causing an unrealistic fear of crime
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E
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in USA, Gerbner found heavy users of TV (4+hrs a day) had higher levels of fear of crime
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• However, the existence of such correlations doesn’t prove that media viewing causes fear
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• As Sparks notes, much ‘media effects’ research ignores the meanings that viewers give to media
violence
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• This criticism reflects the interpretivist view that if we want to understand the possible effects of
the media, we must look at the meanings people give to what they see and read
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• An alternative approach is to consider how far media portrayals of ‘normal’ rather than criminal lifestyles
might also encourage people to commit crime
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• As Lea and Young put it: “the mass media have disseminated a standardised image of lifestyle particularly in
the areas of popular culture and recreation, which, for those unemployed and surviving through the dole
queue or only able to obtain employment at very low wages, has accentuated the sense of relative
deprivation”
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• The result is to stimulate the sense of relative deprivation and social exclusion felt by marginalised groups
who cannot afford these goods
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• In this instance, the media are instrumental in setting the norm and thus in promoting crime
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• Moral entrepreneurs who disapprove of some particular behaviour- drug taking, for instance- may use the media to put
pressure on the authorities to ‘do something’ about the alleged problem
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• By helping to label marijuana smoking, which previously had been legal, as criminal, the media helped to cause crime
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A moral panic is an exaggerated over-reaction by
society to a perceived problem- usually driven or inspired by the media- where the reaction enlarges the problem out of all
proportion to its real seriousness
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Ø Media present group in a negative, stereotypical fashion + exaggerate scale of problem
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• This usually leads to calls for a ‘crackdown’ on the group
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• E
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in the case of drugs, setting up special drug squads led police to discover more drug taking
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Mods and Rockers

• Most influential study of moral panics + role of the media is Cohen’s
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Mods wore smart dress + rode scooters;
rockers wore leather jackets + rode motorbikes
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However,
although disorder was relatively minor, the media over-reacted
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• Cohen says this inventory contained three elements:
Ø Exaggeration+ distortion: media exaggerated no
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Ø Prediction: media regularly assumed + predicted further conflict + violence would result
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- were all negatively labelled +
associated with deviance
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E
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bikers in different parts of
country who misbehaved could be seen as part of a more general underlying problem of disorderly youth
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This led to calls for an increased control response from the police + courts
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• The media further amplified the deviance by defining the 2 groups+ their subcultural styles
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By emphasising their supposed differences, the media crystallised two
distinct identities and transformed loose-knit groupings into two tight-knit gangs
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• Cohen notes that media definitions of the situation are crucial in creating a moral panic, because in large-scale modern societies,
most people have no direct experience of the vents themselves+ thus have to rely on the media for info about them
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The Wider Context
• Cohen puts the moral panic about the mods and rockers into the wider context of change in post-war British
society
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• Cohen argues that moral panics often occur at times of social change, reflecting the anxieties many people
feel when accepted values seem to be undermined
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• Folk devil created by media symbolises+ gives a focus to popular anxieties about social disorder
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• By dramatising the threat to society in the form of a folk devil, the media raises the collective consciousness
and reasserts social controls when central values are threatened
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For example
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• They argue that the moral panic over ‘mugging’ in the British media in the 1970s served to distract attention
from the crisis of capitalism, divide the WC on racial grounds + legitimate a more authoritarian style of rule
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These include dangerous dogs,
New Age travellers, bogus asylum seekers, child sex abuse, Aids, binge drinking, ‘mad cow’ disease and sing
parents
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• What turns the ‘amplifier’ on and off: why are the media able to amplify some
problems into a panic, but not others? Why do panics not go on increasing
indefinitely once they have started?
• Do today’s media audiences, who are accustomed to ‘shock, horror’ stories,
really react with panic to media exaggerations? McRobbie + Thornton argue
that moral panics are now routine +have less impact
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Lifestyle choices that
were condemned 40 years ago, such as single motherhood are no longer
universally regarded as deviant + so it is harder for the media to create panics
about them
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E
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cinema, TV, video+ computer games have all been
accused of undermining public morality+ corrupting the young
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Arrival of internet has led to fears of cyber-crime, which Thomas+ Loader define as computermediated activities that are either illegal or considered illicit by some+are conducted through a global electronic networks
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Wall identifies 4 categories of cybercrime:
Ø Cyber-trespass- crossing boundaries into others’ cyber-property
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Ø Cyber-deception and theft- including identity theft ‘phishing’ (obtaining bank account details by deception)+violation of
intellectual property rights (e
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illegal downloading)
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Ø Cyber-pornography- including porn involving minors, and opportunities for children to access porn on the net
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Cyber-violence includes cyber-stalking (e
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sending
unwanted, threatening or offensive emails) and hate crimes against minority groups, as well as bullying by text
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• However, the new information+ communication technology also provides police+ state with greater opportunities for
surveillance + control of the population
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