Media Flashcards
Galtung and Ruge’s news values - crime and deviance…
1.Immediacy
2.Dramatization – action and excitement
3.Personalisation – human interest stories
4.Higher status persons and celebrities
5.Simplification – eliminating shades of grey
6.Novelty or
unexpectedness – a new angle
7.Risk – victim-centred stories about vulnerability and fear
8.Violence – especially visible and spectacular acts
Studies in support of violence in the media…
Ericson et al (1991) Toronto’s press – 45-71% of quality press and radio news was about various forms of deviance.
Williams and Dickinson (1993) British newspapers devote 30% of their news space to crime.
Fictional representations of crime…
Fictional representations of crime, criminals and victims follow what Surette (1998) calls the ‘law of opposites’ – they are opposite to the official statistics – and strikingly similar to news coverage.
Property crime is under-represented- while violence, drugs and sex crimes are over represented.
Fictional cops usually get their man.
Fictional sex crimes are usually perpetrated by psychopathic strangers, not acquaintances.
While real life homicides mainly result from brawls and domestic disputes, fictional ones are the product of greed and calculation.
Fictional villains tend to be higher status, middle aged white males.
Changes in types of crime…
Schlesinger and Tumber (1994) found that in the 60’s the focus was on murders and petty crimes, by the 1990’s reporting included more on drugs, child abuse, terrorism, football hooliganism and mugging. The media has also been preoccupied with sex crimes.
Distortion and exaggeration of crime…
Chris Greer (2005): “All media tend to exaggerate the extent of violent crime.”
Most crime is fairly routine, trivial and non-dramatic. However, TV programmes like Crimewatch often pick up on the more serious and violent offences with reconstructions giving quite frightening, dramatized insights into the crimes committed. This focus on the exceptional and the dramatic is a routine feature of crime dramas on TV or film, as well as of news reports, and gives a false and misleading impression of the real extent of such crimes.
Williams and Dickinson found 65% of crime stories in ten national newspapers were about violence. In the same year (1989) the British Crime Survey reported only 6% of crimes involved violence.
Marxism…
The reporting of crime reflects the ideology of the ruling class, meaning:
The crimes of the ruling class or those at the higher end of society are under-reported. The media’s emphasis on sexual and violent crime means less importance is attached to some very large and serious white- collar crimes and corporate crimes, which rarely get reported.
Crimes of the working class are over-reported.
The reporting of crime is used as a way of maintaining control over powerless groups.
Feminism…
Crime reporting reinforces the stereotyping and oppression of women.
Women are portrayed as victims.
Under reporting of violence against women, especially domestic violence.
They are highly critical of reporting of sex crimes against women as a way to provide entertainment.
Pluralism…
In reporting crime the media helps to keep social solidarity.
Crimes reported tend to reflect the things people are most concerned about and most want to see reported, thus they create demand which is met by the media.
Different forms of media report different crimes in different ways, they are not all dominated by a single ideology or small group of owners pushing the same agenda.
Postmodernism…
Baudrillard – Media creates reality – people have no understanding of crime only the representations of crime they experience through the mass media.
