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Youth, Crime and Media MEP208

Youth, Crime and Media MEP208. 11. Crime Reporting: Representations and Restrictions. Do the media just report crime?. Specialist role of the court reporter Role of gatekeepers, especially police

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Youth, Crime and Media MEP208

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  1. Youth, Crime and MediaMEP208 11. Crime Reporting: Representations and Restrictions

  2. Do the media just report crime? • Specialist role of the court reporter • Role of gatekeepers, especially police • Media as a vehicle to foster public awareness, fear and condemnation e.g. Anti Social Behaviour Orders, newsworthiness of violent crime • ‘Real crime’ as media entertainment

  3. Crime and court reporting • “a court reporter has to remember to do nothing to prejudice a fair trial. This is the basis of the strict rules of contempt of court” (Clother 1998: 205) • Three conditions: all reports must be… • Accurate • Balanced • Contemporaneous

  4. Gatekeepers as informants • Specialist court reporters are able to develop important contacts / sources • Police secrecy is favoured because reporters are more likely to secure exclusivity to a particular case (Chibnall 1981) • Defendants, prosecutors, witnesses, etc. can be interviewed but only reported on after the trial has concluded

  5. Journalist restrictions Crime reporters will frequently receive restriction orders on what they can report, such as: • Names and places of residence of persons involved in the trial • Certain evidence deemed inconclusive • In some instances, whole cases until verdicts have been passed

  6. Media as public vehicle for the ‘name and shame’ culture Anti Social Behaviour Act 2003: • ‘Intimidating’ groups of two or more young people can be dispersed • Noise and graffiti are criminalised • Local authorities given powers to close noisy pubs and clubs • Media allowed to name ‘anti-social’ kids (Muncie 2004)

  7. Consequences of ASBOs • According to Young and Matthews (2003) the public have become more intolerant of ever-widening deviant behaviour (as defined by law enforcement agencies) • Fear and loathing of young people has increased as an outcome of ASBOs

  8. Consequences of news reporting about violent crime • Content analysis of news shows major differences between offences, victims and offenders represented by media compared to official crime statistics (Reiner 2002) • In one month of 1989, 64.5% of UK news crime stories dealt with violent crime but crime surveys found that only 6% of reported crimes were violent (Williams and Dickenson 1993: 40) • The media construction of ‘mugging’ as a crime problem justifies more punitive sentencing of offenders (Hall et al 1978)

  9. ‘Real crime’ television • Crime Scene Investigations: fascination with the ‘hidden’ activities of criminal investigators • CCTV provides cheap, popular, highly ‘realist’ programming e.g. Police, Camera, Action • Crimewatch and Crimestoppers: media producers work alongside investigators to reconstruct and solve crimes • Media content and imagery may distort statistical evidence (the BBC’s Crimewatch tells its audience ‘Don’t have nightmares’) – there is disproportionate media coverage of violent crime (Marsh 1991)

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