Media representations of crime

Question 1

What % of quality press and radio news was about deviance in Ericson et al’s study of Toronto?

Answer 1

45-71%

Question 2

How does the picture of crime change when looking at official statistics and the media?

Answer 2

1. The media over-represent violent and sexual crime
   - Ditton and Duffy: 46% of media reports were about these crimes, yet these made up only 3% of all crimes recorded by the police
2. The media portray criminals and victims as older and more middle-class than those typically found in the CJS
3. Media coverage exaggerates police success in clearing up cases
4. The media exaggerate the risk of victimisation, especially to women, white people and higher status individuals
5. Crime is reported as a series of separate events without structure and without examining underlying causes
6. The media overplay extraordinary crimes and underplay ordinary crimes
   - Felson: this is the ‘dramatic fallacy’

Question 3

List some of the changes in the type of coverage of crime by the news media

Answer 3

1. 1960’s- focus was on murders and petty crime, 1990’s- murder and petty crime were of less interest to the media
   - This change was due to the abolition of the death penalty but also as crime rates were rising so a crime had to be ‘special’ to attract coverage
2. Increasing preoccupation with sex crimes
   - Soothill and Walby: newspaper reporting of rape cases increased from under a quarter of all cases in 1951 to over 1/3 in 1985

Question 4

What do Cohen and Young argue about crime in relation to a social construction?

Answer 4

That the news isn’t discovered, but rather manufactured

Question 5

What are news values?

Answer 5

News values are the criteria by which journalists and editors decide whether a story is newsworthy enough to make it into the newspaper or news bulletin

Question 6

List the key news values which influence the selection of crime stories

Answer 6

1. Immediacy
2. Dramatisation
3. Personalisation (about individuals)
4. Higher-status
5. Simplification
6. Novelty/ unexpectedness
7. Risk
8. Violence

Question 7

What figure does Mandel estimate in regards to the amount of crime thrillers sold/watched?

Answer 7

Estimates that from 1945-1984 over 10 billion crime thrilers were sold worldwide, while about 25% of prime time TV and 20% of films are crime shows or movies

Question 8

List some evidence which backs up Surette’s idea that fictional representations of crime are ‘the laws of opposites’ to official statistics

Answer 8

• Property crime is under-represented, while violence, drugs and sex crimes are over-represented
• In real life, homicides mainly result from brawls and domestic disputes, but fictional ones are the product of greed and calculation
• Fictional sex crimes are committed by pyschopathic strangers, not acquaintances
• Fictional police men usually catch the perpetrator