News Media's Misrepresentation Of Crime

Crime and justice provides a substantial portion of the media’s raw material; crime stories are good ‘products’ for the media; public perception’s are influenced by the media; and crime policies are created, endorsed, or abandoned based in part on media coverage and public reaction (Guastaferro,2008). With the recent killings of unarmed black men and boys broadcasted throughout today’s media, in addition to the backlash that they receive by society as being involved in any type of Criminal activity or being depicted as a threat to public safety to justify the injuries,

It is no secret that the media is able to influence the general public’s opinion on most anything. Whether the subject is fiction or non, movies, documentaries, and the news especially, are capable of swaying the public’s opinions and perceptions one way or the other. Not even the world of law enforcement is safe from the media’s purview (Barlow, M. H. and Barlow, D. E. and Chiricos T. G., 1995), as media portrayals often romanticize law enforcement as a well oiled machine that always gets the bad guy, and has a perfect relationship with the public. On top of this, the media has displayed a poor habit of portraying crime as predominantly violent and racial, rather than showing the whole picture(Gilliam, F. D. and Iyengar, S. and Simon, A. and Wright, O., 1996). In this paper, the motives driving these depictions, as well as the scope and effect of the media’s influence on public perception of law enforcement, will be explored and discussed.

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.

Criminology is continuously changing and developing. Advances of technology have made media our primary news source for crime. We believe the stories told by our local news media, not doubting a word because these sources are supposedly reliable. Nevertheless, they sometimes do spread false information. It may be intentional or unintentional. According to Cohen, media presence amplifies a problem which did not previously exist (Steeves and Milford, 2015) thus creating a moral panic. As media influence increases, it is necessary for criminologists to study moral panics, such as the Columbine School shootings or the Hurricane Katrina aftermath.

Pop culture media, like Law and Order, has a way of showing people how crime is portrayed. Case (2013), mentions that past studies about the representation of crime in the media has increasingly shown fear to the public and portraying unrealistic standards of how crime is in the real world. Media likes to exaggerate how things truly are in the real world, which is why people believe what the media portrays. People will believe that everything they see in a television show can truly happen in the real world, which certain things can happen but not everything. If people end up believing in how the media portrays crime then people will be living in fear of their society being more violent than it actually is (Case, 2013).

The role the mass media plays in the public perception of Law Enforcement and the Criminal Justice System is potentially important in relation to the viewer’s attitude and beliefs. Does the general public support law enforcement or does the media create a negative perception of the police in the press and on network television? The CSI Effect has gained huge popularity among researchers, what is it; and how does it affects the public’s role in criminal proceedings? In relation to the mass media, how important of a role do common demographic variables such as race and age play a part in the public’s perception of law enforcement?

The media plays the role as entertaining and a source of information to its viewers, however, with the current crime trends, most viewers have the perceptions that our criminal justice system is lacking in areas of proper sentencing and protecting the viewers. All this is based upon what we see in the media is the information reliable or not? I say this because of hearing about news personality lying about their experience only to booster the networks rating. When the criminal justice system has contact with the media, most will withhold information or give misleading information to justify the capture or conviction of a criminal. So not only are we questioning the efficacy of the criminal justice system but the media as well.

(Australian Institute of Criminology, 2009, p. 6) The media’s representation of a rapidly increasing violent crime rate is not supported by statistics which reflect that while the crime rate is rising, the rate is steady and it is believed that this number could even be fluctuated by the increase of victims reporting these types of crime to the police. According to the Australian Survey of Social Attitudes 2007, 74% of the respondents had quite a lot/a great deal of confidence in the police to solve crime. (Australian Institute of Criminology, 2007 p. 16-17) Although the statistics show the general trend of violent criminal offences is static, a significant proportion of our population still has the perception that our crime rates are increasing (Australian Institute of Criminology, 2010) due to media influence. Another way the media misrepresents Australia’s crime rate is by selectively reporting violent crimes whilst under reporting other offences, which are more prevalent in society.

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,

As far as time itself people have always committed crimes. We can find the first crime in the bible itself when Cain killed his brother Able. However what we did not have back then was the media coverage of the story. The media has been able to influence the criminal justice system by expressing strong opinions about different cases. In some of those cases, the media has picked a side. Generally, people tend to pick sides depending on whom they believe, there is always two sides to every story. However with the media it becomes different, because the media tends to pick one side over the other and some people are influenced by the media opinion and that makes the job of the criminal justice system more difficult, since they have to find

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.

a. Imagine asking 100 strangers to describe a criminal. Predict whether those descriptions would be likely to focus on street criminals, or the variety of topics covered in this video.

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 importance given to certain crimes in the daily newspapers and other media sources shows us proof to the fact that crime is a topic that has the public’s interest and is a focus of their worries (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2001). It goes on to discuss the fact that crime as reported on by the media increases the public’s levels of fears and that there is little or no correlation to actual levels of violent crime in our society today.

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.