Media Representations of Crime

• Ericson et al's Toronto study found that 45-71% of quality press and radio news is about various forms of crime and its control
• Williams & Dickson found that British Newspapers devote 30% of their space to crime
• Ditton & Duffy found 46% of media reports were about violent or sexual crimes, yet only 3% of police reports were about this
• Felson found that official statistics show that criminals tend to be younger and more working class than what is portrayed in media, this is caused 'media fallacy'
• Felson refers to the 'Dramatic Fallacy' to overplaying extraordinary crimes
• Felson refers to the 'Ingenuity fallacy' that makes it seem crime is daring and clever
• Media coverage often exaggerates the success of police in solving crimes
• Media reports crime as a set of separate events instead of underlying causes of this crime
• Schlesinger & Tumber found that the 60's media focussed on murder and petty crimes, but by the 90's the focus was on drugs, child abuse, terrorism, football hooliganism and mugging
• Soothill & Walby found that newspaper reports of rape was just under a quarter of all cases in 1951, but over a third in 1985
• Cohen & Young say news is not discovered by manufactured
• Reiner suggests that editors and journalists filter news through what is 'newsworthy'
• Jewkes highlights a range of news values
• News Values are;

  • Dramatisation
  • Proximity
  • Simplification
  • Risk
  • Spectacle
  • Status
  • Sex and Violence
  • Children
• Mandel found that 25% of TV shows and 20% of films fell under the crime genre
• Surette found fictional representations of crime fall under the 'law of opposites' - a backwards version of reality
• Examples of 'Law of Opposites' in fictional representations of crime are;

  • Property crime underrepresented
  • Fictional homicides are due to greed/calculation
  • Fictional sex crimes by psychopathic strangers
  • Fictional villains are higher status
  • Police usually catch the perpetrator
• However, the rise in infotainment shows ie, COPS tend to feature actual representations of crime