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Misrepresentation of crime in the media
Misrepresentation of crime in the media
Misrepresentation of crime in the media
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Compare and contrast crime "myths" and "facts." The media plays a huge role in forming people's perceptions of crime. Without the media we would remain ignorant to occurrences outside our direct social groups. The media and especially news coverage therefore provides us with an important point of contact with the rest of society. In evaluating its effect on popular perceptions of crime it becomes important to consider where most of the information comes from and how representative it is on actual criminality. If it takes "facts" (the truth, the actual event, a real thing) or if it is heightened to a crime myth. With a myth being based upon "exaggeration" or heightening of "ordinary" events in life. Crime myths become a convenient mortar to fill gaps in knowledge and to provide answers to question social science either cannot answer or has failed to address. Myths tend to provide the necessary information for the construction of a "social reality of crime (Quinney, 1970)." As crime related issues are debated and re debated, shaped and reshaped in public forms, they become distorted into myth, as largely seen in the mass media. The social construction of myths of crime and criminal justice seems to follow a series of recurrent patterns. These patterns allow for an unprecedented amount of social attention to be focused upon a few isolated criminal events or issues. This attention is promoted by intense, but often brief, mass media coverage of a select problem. Intense social concern of an issue is achieved by a variety of means from the mass media, government, law enforcement officials, interpersonal communications, and the interests of reform groups whom all play major roles in focusing the publics attention on select so... ... middle of paper ... ...ime myths thus begin to take shape. Whether it be through criminal acts being heightened to a crime myth or exaggerating ordinary events in life. Crime myths fill in the gaps to provide answers to questions for the public. Prooving that crime myths and facts can be intertwinned to make a socially accepted answer to crimes across Australia. Bibliography Blumberg, M, Kappeler, V, and Potter, G. 1993, The Mythology and Crime and Criminal Justice, Prospect Heights, I11.: Waveland Press. Daly, Kathleen, Goldsmith, Andrew, and Israel, Mark. 2006, Crime and Justice: A guide to criminology, third addition, Thomson, Lawbook Co. Healey, Justin. 2001, Issues in Society, Crime and Justice, The Spinney Press. Healey, Kaye. 1998, Issues in Society, Youth and Law, The Spinney Press. Williams, Katherine S. 1991, Criminology, Blackstone Press Limited, Great Britain.
Schmalleger, Frank. Criminology: A Brief Introduction. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc., Publishing as Prentice Hall., 2011.
Hickey, T. J. (2010). Taking Sides: Clashing Views in Crime and Criminology, 9th Edition. New York, NY: The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
• Paton, John, et al., eds. Crimes and Punishment Vol. 2 New York: Marshall Cavendish Corporation, 1986.
As Nils Christie argued, crime is a property of the state (2004). As such, it can be defined by the same systems of ideals which influence the state. Crime statistics, which refer to a category of human acts that society view as deviant, can consequently be argued to be without objectivity (Dorling and Simpson, 1999). The statistics they provide are thus arguably not exact. To a certain extent one could infer they are reflections of society, of those who present the data and most importantly of those who accumulate it. The facts themselves become a socially constructed foundation for social knowledge, which inevitably become subjective. This essay aims to discuss how ideological biases within the Police and to a certain extent the media are reflected in the crime statistics.
Schmalleger, Frank, Criminal Justice A Brief Introduction, Upper Saddle River, NJ, Pearson Education Inc. , 2010, Page 387
Winfree, T., & Abadinsky, H. (2nd Ed.). (2003). Understanding Crime: Theory and Practice. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth publishers.
Muncie, J., and Mclaughin, E. (1996) The Problem of Crime. 2nd ed. London: Sage Publication Ltd.
Throughout society there are both individuals and groups of people with a wide range of perceptions about crime and justice. These perceptions are influenced by the media and what the media presents. Media presents crime stories in ways that selectively distort and manipulate public perception, thus creating a false picture of crime. Therefore the media provides us with perceptions and social constructions about our world. Firstly I will be discussing the role of the media in constructing knowledge about crime. I will begin by explaining why the media is important, and go further to explain that media representations construct knowledge of crime and since knowledge about crime is constructed it does not necessarily capture reality in fact crime stories are often sensationalised. I will then link this to my central argument that the media shapes people’s perceptions of crime and how this is important as it can lead to changes in the law. I will then explain what it is that the public or society needs to be aware of when reading and watching media reports about crime. We need to be aware of bias and moral panics that are created by the media and how the media shapes or influence’s public perception through this, it is important for us to be aware of misleading or false crime stories so that we are not swayed by the media in believing what they want us to believe.
Secondly, the mass media of communication are information sources to which the members of modern society widely attend and rely upon. Finally, as a number of researchers have documented, a substantial proportion of crime-related news is purely for entertainment content (Sacco, 1982). As a result of the essential correctness of these assumptions, the conceptualization of public perceptions of crime as, in large part, products of media influence appears to be most reasonable. Within such a framework the role of mass media as distributors of crime content becomes less noticeable. Although individuals generally lack experience with crime, they do not lack experience with their communities. If perceptions of crime are intricately related to more general perceptions of the environment, it is unrealistic to expect that they would cover in any consistent fashion which media consumption or exposure to crime content. In general, it is probable that the importance of the effect exerted by mass media upon perceptions of crime has been exaggerated by promoters of the argument. The relative influence of mass communications in this regard, as compared with, for instance, that of more informal communication processes such as gossip and rumour has been assumed rather than logically deduced or derived from empirical fact
Schmalleger, F. (2009). Criminal justice today: an introductory text for the 21st century (10th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall.
Crime and deviance make up a large proportion of news coverage as “Williams and Dickinson (1993) found that British newspapers devote up to 30% of their news space to crime” however, “the media’s picture of crime is then usually compared with the real world picture, normally derived from official criminal statistics.” Therefore, connoting that the media’s perception of crime and deviance is something that could be seen as not always being particularly true. There are certain areas of crime and deviance which is seen to be particularly over-represented throughout the media, for instance as “Christie (1986: 18) describes the ‘ideal victim’ as ‘a person or category of individuals who – when hit by crime – most readily are given the complete and legitimate status of being a victim’. This group includes those who are perceived as
Gardner, T. J., & Anderson, T. M. (2012). Criminal Law (11th Edition ed.). Mason, Ohio: Cengage Learning.
Wright, J. (2012). Introduction to criminal justice. (p. 9.1). San Diego: Bridgepoint Education, Inc. Retrieved from https://content.ashford.edu/books/AUCRJ201.12.1/sections/sec9.1
In conclusion, our knowledge of criminal events is somewhat ambiguous by other sources prone to manipulation and error (Skogan, 1975) unless we report the criminal acts we witness, there will always be a ‘dark figure’ in crime
In society today the media’s has an extensive influence on the public by mediums such as the internet, television news, newspapers and radio. In addition, crime is often considered both a source of news and entertainment with such programs as CSI, NCIS and Criminal Minds being some amongst many others that also influence public perception on crime (Hayes & Levett, 2013). Evidence shows that the medias portrayal of crime can indeed affect the public’s perception although evidence will demonstrates that crime perception can be unique to each individual. Evidence shows that media reports have the potential to strongly influence people’s daily activities (Weatherburn and Indermaur, 2004). When the media reports on a crime it triggers an effect