Crime And Media Analysis

Victims, through news reports and social media, often become celebrities overnight. Victims of crime are instantly thrown into the public eye and are fair game when reporters are rushing the scene for a top news story. The media frenzy creates a chaos that magnifies the victims pain and suffering to acquire viewer’s attention, and the reports are usually more gruesome, violent and more sexually charged than the truth. Sexually violent crimes are often a top news focus, re-victimizing the survivor of the sex crime. Research shows that “84% of prime-time television shows contain at least one episode of sexual harassment, which perhaps accurately reflects the commonplace nature of this violent crime”(Beirne, 2011, pg. 11). When a crime has been committed, victims are at a vulnerable time in their lives, which is when the media takes the opportunity to move in and overwhelm them even further while distorting the facts, asking questions, and snapping pictures looking for a news story. Victims are often even re-victimized as the media picks through their past, nothing is private, all information received, whether through a dependable source or just another citizen, is displayed for all of society to make their judgment. This can lead to society thinking the victim deserved it, it was their fault, or they weren’t a good person. This type of treatment has a greater devastating emotional

Like so many people, Brent Staples was judged based on ethnicity and gender. Brent Staples, an African American man, has been mistaken for a criminal countless times because of his race. The first time this happened, he scared a young white women when he turned the corner at night, and she ran off, convinced that he was “a mugger, a rapist, or worse.” Brent shares instances of people locking their car doors or crossing the street when he walked by, but he says he can’t blame them, as “young black males are drastically overrepresented among the perpetrators of… violence.” He discusses his childhood in Chester, Pennsylvania where there is “gang warfare, street knifings, and murders” that many of his friends and family have gone to prison or been killed over. He mentions two extreme situations in which he is mistaken for a burglar and tells the story of a journalist mistaken for the killer he was reporting on. Brent Staples makes it clear that these occurrences are continuous and common, and so he has had to make changes to accommodate for these terrified white people in public places by, for example, whistling classic music at night. The point he is trying to make with this article is that Caucasians have some common misconceptions about African Americans, often assuming they are all criminals, even though Brent has clearly illustrated himself as “one of the good boys.”

Americans have given up some of their freedoms to be protected by the United States, so they have a right to be informed. In the majority of the all the discussion boards, the classmates agreed that the media creates problems. By giving stories more attention than others, the media creates problems. The media tends to focus more on seriously violent crimes more than missing, or kidnapping cases. According to Champion, in the portrayal of both offenders and victims of crimes in the media there is a "significant focus on high profile crimes as well as societal ills related to crime and victimization" (Champion 2007). In addition, the media reports stories that can make money, and to draw viewership. These are important to the media because without the funding the media wont be able to report from different places across the U.S., and without the support of the public looking them, the media will lose its only audience. The media plays a significant role in public safety by keeping the public aware of crime increase, violence, and fugitives. This allows the community to take action to promote their safety. Americans put a lot of trust into the media in hopes that everything they report is honest and fair.

Fear mixed with public view about rising crime rates contribute to a lack of faith by citizens in the criminal justice system. I believe that the news wants more ratings sometimes so they try to exaggerate a story to make it sounds interesting and exciting. Social media has a major impact on people’s attitudes especially young people. People read something that’s so convincing and believe it immediately. They don’t do any research of their own to get a point of view of all sides of a story. I believe a good example of attitudes of people was the Alton Sterling shooting. The altercation was videoed by witnesses and went viral. People automatically were condemning police because they shot and killed a man that looked defenseless in the situation. People just made assumptions and social media impacted their view on what happened. Not until later was the detailed story of the incident came out and the body camera footage. Some people changed their minds, were indecisive or still believed what they first saw and heard. Media caused a major response of public attitudes on how and why this happened. It caused attitude change of how we view the police. Citizens didn’t feel safe or protected rather targeted because of their race. This case caused a domino effect almost because of the negative attitude towards police officers here in Louisiana and the rest of the country. I believe media has a major impact on citizens attitudes because it can cause a

Over the years, our generations’ stereotypical views over the issue on young black males being viewed as dangerous has grown significantly. There are different reasons why these stereotypes occur in our society. People feel on edge when running into them in dark passageways, whenever it’s late at night. Also, while they’re sitting at red lights and notice someone walking towards their cars, they instantly initiate down the door locks. People think stereotyping black men this way keeps them safer because they assume the worst. However; other people disagree with instantly judging who they see around them, it hurts more people as well as themselves by viewing black men this way. Brent Staples, the author of “Black Men and Public Spaces,” claims that he’s considered a stereotypical black criminal. In his essay, Staples succeeds because he successfully appeals to people’s emotions, is an expert on human behavior, creates common ground and offers a logical solution.

There is the crime pattern theory that explains how individual’s routine activities affect their knowledge of criminal activities and the above leads to spatial concentrations of crimes in some places. Individual developmental maps determine their regular activities and spaces that are represented as topological features. The routine operations act as nodes or sites where people spend time most of time and criminals will move there depending on the level of security anticipated. The offenders will decide where to attack depending on how well they understand the routine activities of their clients (Carlo, and Marie-Noële, 15). On that note, it is not possible for criminals to just attack a place without evaluating the dynamics of the

The racial stereotyping of minority groups is a prevalent problem within the United State’s criminal justice system. It is a regrettable issue which permeates American society. The young Black male, in particular, is often portrayed as a criminal based on incorrect assumptions regarding who perpetrates crime. There are several components contributing to the criminal stigma of Blacks. The way crime is conveyed by American culture is possibly as important as how crime actually functions. The widespread belief that Black males commit the majority of crime skews the view society’s perception of Blacks. Typifications of Black males include a violent, threatening, thug-like character. The connection between race and crime is so deeply seeded in

Throughout my research I found that the book Criminology A Sociological Understanding, did a great job of listing the way media overdramatizes crime. The first way that the media does this is through something called crime waves. These crime waves pay close detail to a small number of multiple crimes which leads to a public panic that the crimes may keep occurring (Barkan, 26). One example in local media is something I saw on the local news tonight. 2 bodies were found today in Omaha in separate parts of the city

For decades, Americans have been associating young black men with stereotypes that affiliate them with violence. These stereotypes, which are based purely off of appearances, have caused many young black males to face violent, unnecessary, as well as unjust encounters with white police officers. As the number of deaths among young black men increase because of police brutality, society should change how they perceive these men in order to prevent inflicting more harm to them. Specific cases, such as the cases of Freddie Gray, Oscar Grant, Trayvon Martin, and several others, will be presented in order to display how the distortion of the stereotypes can cause incredible harm to young black men due to police violence in addition to how stereotypes affect society’s perception of all young black men.

In the essay Staples gave a prime example of racial profiling (Staples, 1986, p. 1-3). He showed how of African American men “fit the profile” of criminals. This perception is known all too well by many African American men like myself. Due to our fashion sense, our style has also been stereotyped to “fit the profile” of a criminal, or a Thug.

Most people use second hand information as their core source of information about crime, this source of information usually being the media. When carrying out sample research in Birmingham, Susan Smith (1984) discovered that 52% of people obtained most of their information about crime from the media, 36% obtained it from hearsay or alleged experiences of friends and neighbours, 3% from their own experiences, and 1% from the police service themselves (cited in Jones, 2001; 8). However the media tend to exaggerate upon areas of criminal activity causing a moral panic. ‘A moral panic is a semi- spontaneous or media generated mass movement based on the perception that some individual or group,

Attacks receive more coverage when they harm or kill victims, involve hijackings or aircraft, have known perpetrators, and select targets associated with Western countries. A study of transnational terrorism shows that attacks that inflict injuries are twice as likely to attract media attention as those that do not. The attacks in which the perpetrator can be identified are four times as likely to be reported in a newspaper and ten times as likely to be reported on television (The Media’s Role in International Terrorsim). Attacks in the Middle East or Europe are twice as likely to receive media attention as attacks perpetrated in Latin America (The Media’s Role in International Terrorism). There are very similar factors that influence media coverage of attacks that take place within the United States.

The public depends on the news media for its understanding of crime. Reportedly three quarters (76%) of the public say, they form their opinions about crime from what they see or read in the news (Dorfman & Schiraldi, 2001). After reviewing five hours of reality crime television shows, one is left with a very dismal look on society and a prejudice towards minorities as they are largely depicted as the perpetrators of crime. This new genre commonly referred to as reality television appears to be sweeping the nation by storm. Opinions vary, depending on whom you ask, to what extent reality plays a role versus the selling of a product. Sensationalism, advertising, ratings hype, profiling and fear all comprise the mass

The mass media is a vehicle for delivering information and to entertain. But implications that the media do more harm than good concerning its practices and its effects on the public. The two main categories of mass media are print media and electronic media. Although they overlap in some areas, they differ mostly in the subject matter they cover and in their delivery methods. Research had been conducted in using both these forms to gauge the impact that each one has on the public. Print media tends to be more factual based whereas electronic media tend to focus more on visual aids to help relay the information. The public’s fear of crime has an impact on the public agenda of policy makers. Fear of crime not only affects individual but may

Over the course of the semester, I have learned about numerous aspects of Mass media and crime. We have broken these aspects into nine major topics based on what they focused on. The nine major topics includes theorizing media and crime, construction of crime, media and moral panics, media construction of children, media misogyny, police, offenders, and victims in the media, crime and prison films, role of the internet in crime and crime and surveillance culture. The topics that I found most interesting to me would be media and moral panic, construction of crime news and children and police, offender and victims in the media. I chose these four topics, because they play a role to the overall information that I have been paying close attention to in regards to how the media presents the information and how our Criminal Justice system addresses the concerns in the media. For our final exam, were asked to pick and discuss a topic that interested us, because of my curiosity of those four major topics I decided to pick a historical case that touched basis with all four topic areas. My topic being the historical case of Brown v. Board of Education. My goal of this essay is to give you the back story of the case, explain why I chose this case, discuss how the case is considered newsworthy and how it links to broader social structures.