Crime And Victims In The Media Analysis

The media’s job is to entertain, inform, and educate society on what is going on around the world. The media entertains society by reporting stories that amuse people. The educational function of the media is about allowing society to know their legal rights. The informational aspect of the media does not need to be explained; it is self-explanatory. Within the last three decades, the media’s role has changed dramatically. The media went from using telegraphs, post offices, newspapers, magazines, radio, and television to using cell phones and tablets. In the modern era, which is also sometimes referred to as the information age, global networking and global communication have shaped modern societies. The majority of

Media is everywhere nowadays. Whether it’s billboards, radio, commercials, trailers, or product placement, the media has spent the better part of a century perfecting the ability to sway public opinion. How could this not have an impact on the Criminal Justice System? There is an old saying, perception is reality. This clearly applies to the narrative shaping abilities that the media poses. Although not explicitly resulting in an effect on Criminal Justice Policy, Communication Theorist George Gerbner proposed Cultivation Theory, also known as mean world syndrome, which refers to the phenomenon that a viewer experiences when they consume too much violent media content, where in that, they begin to perceive the world as more dangerous than it actually is.

There has been a rise on the topic of gun violence. It has become a more relevant topic today and one cannot walk away from the news without hearing a story related to gun violence either being covered or displayed on the teleprompter below. This paper will analyze three sources: an article written by Dov Cohen, titled “Culture, Social Organization, and Patterns of Violence,”on the trends of violence based on location, a Ted Talk given by Dan Gross, titled “Why Gun Violence Cannot become America’s New Normal,”on the topic of gun violence and how it affected his life as well a proposition to ending violence in the U.S, and an article, “Analyzing Available Data Could Help Improve Background Checks Involving Domestic Violence Records,” written by the U.S. Government of Accountability Office(GAO) which covers the process of background checks within the sales of firearms. These three sources will be evaluated on the bases that they evoke a strong argument with the use ethos, pathos, and logos within their writings.

There is a plethora of crime related movies, TV shows, video games, etc. Violent portrayals of crime are everywhere. As most Americans do not have any personal experience with the criminal justice system, public knowledge of how it operates comes mostly from the media. Dowler (2003) did a study on the relationship between consumption of such media and fear of being victimized by crime. He found that there is, in fact, a relationship and people who consume more of this media are more afraid of crime. “Regular viewers of crime shows are more likely to fear or worry about crime. Similarly, regular crime drama viewers are more likely to hold negative attitudes toward police effectiveness.” (Dowler,

The video ultimately argues that violent crime rates has decreased significantly since the 1990’s. Although gun sales has hastily risen, but this could account for the media displaying increasingly more harsh and violent imagery than ever before. Paul Bond says in his article ‘Stud: TV Violence Linked to ‘Mean World Syndrome’’, “In 1972, there

In the recent years, the conversations of gun violence are increasing dramatically because of some homicide cases. Truly, the gun violence has been the one of biggest elements which threat both personal safety and national security in the United States. Website named Smartgunlaws.org stated that “Since 2015, the total number of incidents is 42,847; Number of deaths are 11,021; It is a really shocked statistics.” (Smartgunlaws.org,2012) It is a really shocked statistic that there are so many people died because of gun violence, but unfortunately there still some people don’t know what is gun violence. A professional editor Mascia defined that “Gun violence describes the results of all incidents of death or injury or threat with firearms without pejorative judgment within the definition. Violence is defined without intent or consequence as a consideration. To that end a shooting of a victim by a perpetrator is considered gun violence as is a defensive use or an officer involved shooting. The act itself, no matter the reason is violent in nature.” (Mascia, Fuhrman,2015).

How will tomorrow’s killers be inspired by today’s mass shootings? It is quite simple. These killers gain inspiration and motivation every day. Unfortunately, tragedies, such as mass shootings, gain more recognition for the perpetrators instead of the victims. Gaining publicity will enhance the enactment of these crimes. We crave to find what is the reason behind this “trend”. A trend that induces fear and will continue to until the lineage breaks. But, this lineage appears to be infinite. A lack of understanding and jumping to conclusions only distracts us from the linkage between how the media pursues to deliver the information and mass shootings. The media’s clenching thirst for information will only proceed to more mass shootings, competition

My research topic is misrepresentation of crime and the criminal justice system in the media. My thesis is that there is a misrepresentation of crime in the media due to a fear of crime, perceived police effectiveness, and distortion of coverage of crime in the media. Studies on crime and the criminal justice system in the media show that the media misrepresents crime and criminals. They also show that the effect the media has on people is based on how people interpret the information. The media influences public opinion about crime and the criminal justice system due to the disproportionate coverage of crimes, criminals, and victims.

In my essay, I argue that the media, in particular the news, has a bigger influence in mass shootings then other stimuli like; access to guns, violent video games, and mental illness. By exploring the news’ role in mass shootings we can begin to discuss the changes that can be made in the way they broadcast. While the news believes they are just doing their duty and reporting the news while also honoring the victims, there really just honoring the perpetrator. With the news portraying the culprit as a hero, relieving what and how many weapons he used, and the amount of people he or she killed they help encourage future perpetrators to “beat the score”.

Victimology, or the study of victims, especially crime victims, has created new categories of victims that had not been previously noted. What are typically known as “street crimes”, such as rape, robbery, murder, and assault, have been identified as crimes since the biblical era, and the victims of such crimes have long been identifiable (Karmen, 2013). It has been the advances in the field of Victimology, and the questions which have been asked, that have identified new types of crime, and with these new crimes, come new types of victims. As social mores change, and new issues emerge, new categories of crime victims will be identified, and each new group of victims will present a new group of issues, which will need to be addressed. As these new groups of victims are identifies, victimologist will be tasked with asking the questions needed, so that the process of how these groups became victims, and be identified, and studied, in hopes of preventing future victimization.

In America’s daily consumption of media a strange trend has developed in the last couple years. It seems that whenever a real life tragedy occurs many news outlets and politicians tend to place the blame, not in the instigator of these violent acts, but instead in the media they consume which they believed made them this way. "I think there's a question as to whether he would have driven in his mother's car in the first place if he didn't have access to a weapon that he saw in video games that gave him a false sense of courage about what he could do that day." (Murphy) This quote taken from an 2013 debate on a bill to ban assault weapons gives us all the information we need. Violence in media and how it affects violence in real life is misrepresented

The news media as most other print, radio, and television media are in a constant competition for ratings. A direct result of this rating competition is the sensationalizing of the media reports received by the general public. One of the most significant problems resulting from the news media’s misrepresentation of crime is the mistrust it creates between the general public and the criminal justice system. If the public were only to believe what is reported by the various news media, then the assumption would have to be that all the crime in this country is at the felonious level in which someone is usually killed with a gun. According to Bohm and Haley (2011), the distribution of police calls indicates that the majority of crime is anything

Different forms of media, such as television, films, books, and newspapers, have similar ways of portraying the criminal justice system. The media constructs representations of crime and justice and in doing this, it presents an often dramatized representation of the criminal justice system; and this does not just influence on the public’s lay view of crime but also for criminal justice experts (Marsh, 2014). In the media it is commonly known that they are a business, and businesses need to make a profit. Because of this, the media’s portrayal of the criminal justice system has been very negative. With the news, their main purpose is to produce what sells. So many of them would edit the information they have gathered and make a story that will sell. Also the media does not show the full process of the criminal justice as a quick process, while in fact it is not. For example, last year, Netflix released a short series called “Making A Murderer”. Most people claimed that they feel like they can solve a crime when they finished watching a series. While that series is very factual, it does not hit every single step of the criminal justice process.

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

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.