Media Representations of Crime

• Williams and Dickinson

  Crime and deviance make up a large proportion of news coverage, found that newspapers devote 30% of their news space to crime. Though they show a keen interest in crime, they give a distorted image of crime, criminals and policing.
• The Media Over-represent Violent and Sexual Crimes:

  For example, Ditton and Duffy found that 46% of media reports were about violent and sexual crimes, yet these only make up 3% of crimes recorded by the police. A review by Marsh found that a violent crime was 36 times more likely to be reported than a property crime in America.
• The Media Portrays Criminals and Victims as Older and More Middle-Class:

  Those typically found in the CJS are the opposite. Felson refers to this as 'Age Fallacy'. Media portrayals of victims tend to leave consumers with the impression that victims and offenders are older, doing this by focusing on crimes which are committed against the elderly. Statistically, you are more likely to be a victim if you are young and male.
• Media Coverage Exaggerates Police Successes:

  As police are a major source of crime stories, and wish to present themselves in a good light, and as the media over-represent violent crimes which often have a higher clean-up rate than property crimes- it then appears as though they are solving more cases than they are.
• The Media Exaggerates the Risk of Victimisation:

  Especially to women, White people, and higher status individuals. Linked to the 'Ingenuity Fallacy' by Felson which argues that the media presume that the criminal is far tactical than they are. Much of the crime that is reported isn't committed through daring, but is a result of opportunity- crime is ordinary, and committed by ordinary people.
• The Media Overplay Extraordinary Crimes:

  They underplay ordinary crimes, Felson calls this the 'Dramatic Fallacy' which argues that media images of crime can lead us to believe that crime and its impacts are more dramatic than in reality. Murder and the CJS have become dramatised ('The Ingenuity Fallacy'), when most crime is mundane.
• Changes in Crime Coverage:

  Schlesinger and Tumber: found in the 1960s the focus had been on murders, and petty crimes were of less interest. The change came partly due to the abolition of the death penalty, and because of rising crime rates, meaning crimes had to be 'special' to attract coverage. By 1990s, coverage had widened to include child abuse, terrorism, and 'mugging'.
• Increasing Preoccupation with Sex Crimes:

  Soothill and Walby: found that newspaper reporting of rape cases had increased from under 1/3 of all cases in 1951, to over 1/3 in 1985. Noting coverage focuses on identifying a 'sex fiend' or 'beast' often using labels. Resulting in a distorted picture of rape as being attacks carried out by psychopathic strangers, when in most cases the perpetrator is known to the victim.
• News Values & Coverage: (1)

  Distorted picture of crime presented through the media reflects that the news is a social construction- it is the outcome of a social process in which some stories are selected, and others ignored. Cohen and Young argue that the news isn't discovered, it is manufactured.
• News Values & Coverage: (2)

  A central aspect of manufacturing news is the notion of 'news values' which are criteria used by journalists/editors to decide whether a story is worthy. Key values: immediacy, dramatisation, personalisation (human interest stories about individuals), higher-status, novelty/unexpectedness, risk, or violence. Hence news coverage focuses on unusual and extraordinary.
• Fictional Representations of Crime:

  From the TV, cinema, and novels are an important source of our knowledge of crime as much of their output is crime-related. Mandel: estimates that from 1945 to 1984, over 10 billion crime thrillers were sold world-wide, while 25% of prime-time TV and 20% of films are crime shows or movies.
• Fictional Representations of Crime:

  Surette: criminals and victims follow 'the law of opposites' as they are the opposite of crime statistics, and strikingly similar to news coverage: property crime is under-represented, while violence/drugs/sex crimes are over-represented. Real-life homicides are mainly resulted from brawls and domestic disputes, fictional ones are due to greed and calculation. Fictional sex crimes are committed by psychopathic strangers, not acquaintances.
• Fictional Representations of Crime: Themes

  Three recent trends: the new genre of 'reality' infotainment shows tend to feature non-White 'underclass' offenders. There is an increasing tendency to show the police as corrupt and brutal (and less successful). Victims have become more central, with law enforcements portrayed as their enemy- the audience is then able to identify with the suffering.