Sociology Media and Crime
Media in Crime
Media give a distorted image of crime
Over-representation of violent and sexual crimes – Ditton and Duffy – 46% of media reports were about violent/sexual crimes but only made up 3% of all crimes recorded by the police
Media coverage exaggerates police success
The police are a major source of crime stories and want to present themselves in a good light
Media exaggerates the risk of victimisation
Especially to women, white people and higher status individuals
Crime is reported as a series of separate events
Without structure and the examination of underlying causes
Media overplay extraordinary crimes
Underplay ordinary crimes
Felson – ‘dramatic fallacy’
Media images lead us to believe that to commit and solve crimes, one needs to be daring and clever
Schlesinger and Tumber – in the 1960s the focus had been on murders and petty crime; in the 1990s murder and petty crime were of less interest to the media; change due to the abolition of the death penalty for murder and because rising crime rates meant that a crime had to be ‘special’ to attract coverage
Increasing preoccupation with sex crimes
Soothill and Walby – newspaper reporting of rape crases increased from under a quarter in 1951 to over a third in 1985; coverage consistently focuses on identifying a ‘sex fiend/beast’ by use of labels
News values and crime coverage
Distorted picture of crime painted by the news media reflects the fact that news is a social construction – the outcome of a social process in which potential stories are selected and others are rejected
Cohen and Young – news is manufactured
A central aspect of the news is the notion of ‘news values’ – criteria by which journalists and editors decide whether a story is newsworthy to be in newspapers or the news bulletin.
Immediacy
Dramatisation – action and excitement
Personalisation – human interest stories about individuals
Higher-status – ie celebrities
Simplification
Novelty or unexpectedness
Risk
Media give a distorted image of crime
Over-representation of violent and sexual crimes – Ditton and Duffy – 46% of media reports were about violent/sexual crimes but only made up 3% of all crimes recorded by the police
Media coverage exaggerates police success
The police are a major source of crime stories and want to present themselves in a good light
Media exaggerates the risk of victimisation
Especially to women, white people and higher status individuals
Crime is reported as a series of separate events
Without structure and the examination of underlying causes
Media overplay extraordinary crimes
Underplay ordinary crimes
Felson – ‘dramatic fallacy’
Media images lead us to believe that to commit and solve crimes, one needs to be daring and clever
Schlesinger and Tumber – in the 1960s the focus had been on murders and petty crime; in the 1990s murder and petty crime were of less interest to the media; change due to the abolition of the death penalty for murder and because rising crime rates meant that a crime had to be ‘special’ to attract coverage
Increasing preoccupation with sex crimes
Soothill and Walby – newspaper reporting of rape crases increased from under a quarter in 1951 to over a third in 1985; coverage consistently focuses on identifying a ‘sex fiend/beast’ by use of labels
News values and crime coverage
Distorted picture of crime painted by the news media reflects the fact that news is a social construction – the outcome of a social process in which potential stories are selected and others are rejected
Cohen and Young – news is manufactured
A central aspect of the news is the notion of ‘news values’ – criteria by which journalists and editors decide whether a story is newsworthy to be in newspapers or the news bulletin.
Immediacy
Dramatisation – action and excitement
Personalisation – human interest stories about individuals
Higher-status – ie celebrities
Simplification
Novelty or unexpectedness
Risk