Crime and deviance - Topic 7: Crime and the Media
Media representations of crime-sociologist list
Key:
Heheh-Sociologist Heheh-Important information
Key information:
● Erikson et al (1991)
- Crime and deviance make up a large proportion of news coverage
- Study of Toronto → 45-47% of quality press/radio news was about
deviance and control
● Williams and Dickinson (1993)
- Newspapers devote up to 30% of space to crime and deviance
- While they may showcase crime at a large rate, it largely distorted and creates
unrealistic views and perceptions:
1. Media overrepresent violence and crime → Ditton and Duffy (1983) found that
46% of media reports were about violent/sexual crimes, while they only make
up 3% of all crimes recorded by the police
→ Marsh (1991) found that US news reports of violent crime were 36x more
likely to be in the news report, than property crime
2. Media portrays criminals and victims as older and middle-class (which is not
the same in the Criminal Justice System (CJS))
→ Felson (1998) - the ‘age fallacy’
3. Media coverage exaggerates police success in clearing up cases → Police are
a major part of crime and want present themselves in a positive light, and
due to the media over-representing violent crime which can be cleared up
quickly
4. Crime is reported as a series of events → no structure and no examining
underlying causes
5. Media overplays extraordinary crime and underplays ordinary crime →
→ Felson (1998) - a ‘dramatic fallacy’, and media portraying criminals as
daring and clever creates the ‘ingenuity fallacy’
→ other fallacies include: class, police
1
, Changes in the types of coverage of crime in the media:
● Schlesinger and Tumber (1994)
- 1960’s → Media focused on murders and petty crimes
- 1990’s → Media focused on drugs, child abuse, terrorism, football hooligans
and mugging
- Media had little to no interest in murders and petty crimes (due to the abolition
of the death penalty for murder, and as crime rates increased media needed
special crimes to use for exposure)
● Soothill and Walby (1991)
- Evidence of increasing preoccupation with sex crimes
- Newspaper reports on S/A increased from under a quarter of all cases in 1951
to over a third in 1985
- Coverage consistently on identifying ‘sex fiends’ and ‘beast’ as a form of a
label (e.g. the balaclava rapist)
- Results in distorted perceptions of rape as a serial offence carried out by
psychopathic strangers
- In rape cases, the victims usually know who the offender/rapist is
News values crime and change
- News is a social construction as it can create a distorted picture of crime
- News is the outcome of a social process with some stories being
rejected/approved and does not just exist to be written by journals
● Cohen and Young (1973)
- News is not discovered but manufactured
- ‘News values’ → criteria in which journalists/editors decide whether a story
is newsworthy to make it into the newspaper/news bulletin
- Key news values that determine if they are newsworthy or not:
1. Immediacy → ‘breaking news’
2. Dramatisation → action/excitement
3. Personalisation → Individuals stories
2
Media representations of crime-sociologist list
Key:
Heheh-Sociologist Heheh-Important information
Key information:
● Erikson et al (1991)
- Crime and deviance make up a large proportion of news coverage
- Study of Toronto → 45-47% of quality press/radio news was about
deviance and control
● Williams and Dickinson (1993)
- Newspapers devote up to 30% of space to crime and deviance
- While they may showcase crime at a large rate, it largely distorted and creates
unrealistic views and perceptions:
1. Media overrepresent violence and crime → Ditton and Duffy (1983) found that
46% of media reports were about violent/sexual crimes, while they only make
up 3% of all crimes recorded by the police
→ Marsh (1991) found that US news reports of violent crime were 36x more
likely to be in the news report, than property crime
2. Media portrays criminals and victims as older and middle-class (which is not
the same in the Criminal Justice System (CJS))
→ Felson (1998) - the ‘age fallacy’
3. Media coverage exaggerates police success in clearing up cases → Police are
a major part of crime and want present themselves in a positive light, and
due to the media over-representing violent crime which can be cleared up
quickly
4. Crime is reported as a series of events → no structure and no examining
underlying causes
5. Media overplays extraordinary crime and underplays ordinary crime →
→ Felson (1998) - a ‘dramatic fallacy’, and media portraying criminals as
daring and clever creates the ‘ingenuity fallacy’
→ other fallacies include: class, police
1
, Changes in the types of coverage of crime in the media:
● Schlesinger and Tumber (1994)
- 1960’s → Media focused on murders and petty crimes
- 1990’s → Media focused on drugs, child abuse, terrorism, football hooligans
and mugging
- Media had little to no interest in murders and petty crimes (due to the abolition
of the death penalty for murder, and as crime rates increased media needed
special crimes to use for exposure)
● Soothill and Walby (1991)
- Evidence of increasing preoccupation with sex crimes
- Newspaper reports on S/A increased from under a quarter of all cases in 1951
to over a third in 1985
- Coverage consistently on identifying ‘sex fiends’ and ‘beast’ as a form of a
label (e.g. the balaclava rapist)
- Results in distorted perceptions of rape as a serial offence carried out by
psychopathic strangers
- In rape cases, the victims usually know who the offender/rapist is
News values crime and change
- News is a social construction as it can create a distorted picture of crime
- News is the outcome of a social process with some stories being
rejected/approved and does not just exist to be written by journals
● Cohen and Young (1973)
- News is not discovered but manufactured
- ‘News values’ → criteria in which journalists/editors decide whether a story
is newsworthy to make it into the newspaper/news bulletin
- Key news values that determine if they are newsworthy or not:
1. Immediacy → ‘breaking news’
2. Dramatisation → action/excitement
3. Personalisation → Individuals stories
2
