The Media Shape Our Perception of Crime and the Criminal Justice System - Research Paper Example

?How does the media shape our perception of crime and the criminal justice system? Any resident in modern urban Australia is constantly exposed to a wide range of different media including newspapers, magazines, television, radio, cinema and increasingly also web based sources via the internet. In both news reporting and in light entertainment genres there is a marked preoccupation with crime, policing and criminal justice. Murder, for example, attracts extensive media attention despite the fact that it is a relatively rare form of crime. Detective series are much loved, and the dramatic depiction of violent crime in particular forms the core theme of most action films. The media have a role in informing and even educating the public about such themes, but it must always be remembered that this is not the only, and often not the primary, function of mass media. Media exist in a business world where they must generate revenue, and they are driven by market forces as much as ethics and attention to veracity and an accurate representation of reality. Against this background it is important to ask the question whether, and in what way the mass media change people’s perception of crime and whether this increases their own fear of crime occurring in their own personal sphere. A number of empirical studies, mostly based in the United States of America, have tried to pin down exactly what the effects of media are on people’s perceptions of crime and the criminal justice system. A survey of 2,250 residents in the state of Florida in 1997 explored the relationship between what people view on the television news and how this affects their fear of crime, and tested three hypotheses: “ that the frequency of watching TV news relates directly to reported levels of fear of crime… that the frequency of watching local news is more consequential for fear levels than is that of watching national news … that the social and experiential contexts, or circumstances, of audience members make a difference in how meaning is received from media messages” (Chiricos, Padgett and Gertz: 2000, p. 762-763) This study analysed variables including gender, age, education, black/white ethnic status and experience of crime as a victim and concluded that watching local news does have an effect on people, but that “when the news is closer to the everyday lives of the viewers, it will have more input to their fears,” (Chiricos, Padgett and Gertz: 2000, p. 779) The frequency of viewing local news was found to be significant for viewers’ fear of crime and the authors note that a preoccupation with violent crime in local news is doubly harmful for residents in high crime areas because it resonates with them much more than with residents in affluent and low crime areas, who see it as something distant which does not affect them. Another large study looked at differences in the way that local news media, and especially local television, depict urban and suburban crime, in a sample of 7,667 local news stories drawn from the whole of the United States. (Yanich: 2004, p. 541) This study is important because it provides statistical evidence of the proportion of news broadcasting time devoted to crime (around 28%), which makes it the predominant or second-most frequent story in all of the newscasts. When the crime reporting was analysed further, it transpired that court stories were prominent, 35-38% which is explained by the relative ease of obtaining information in the local area, the cost-saving ability to use material from previous reporting of the actual crime, and, significantly, “court stories offer court news as miniseries – the media trial – in which the media co-opt the criminal justice system as a source of high drama and entertainment. (Yanich: 2004, p. 544) Yanich also observed a phenomenon which he describes as “crime creep” whereby crimes occurring in suburban areas are more often reported than crimes occurring in urban areas, using a motif of advancing waves of crime spreading out from the core city to the suburbs. This happens despite the facts that urban crime is more than twice as common as suburban crime. Using devices like interviewing neighbourhood residents, devoting more time to these stories, and broadcasting short videos from the location with a studio produced voice-over the television therefore “packages” these stories Yanich suggests that the underlying message of this style of reporting is “that random violent crime is a feature of late twentieth-century America and there is nothing we can do about it.” (Yanich: 2004, p. 550) There are a great many more empirical studies which carry out deeper analysis of particular aspects of people’s perception of crime as presented in the mass media. Dixon (2008) examined the over-representation of Black Americans as criminals on television in Los Angeles County and concluded that attention to crime news was positively related to concern about crime, harsher culpability judgement about Black suspects, and the perception that Black people are violent. The study concludes that “the most likely underlying mechanism for these effects includes the increased accessibility of stereotypical constructs linking Blacks with violent crime as a result of frequent activation that results from local crime news viewing.” (Dixon: 2008, p. 121) Most people watch both fictional crime programmes and fact-based news reporting of crime. Kort-Butler and Hartshorn (2011) examined whether the type of programme being watched would have an effect on people’s fear of crime and their opinions on matters like the support for the criminal justice system or for the death penalty. This article makes the useful point that many popular shows on contemporary television are “nonfictional documentary style” which does not follow the standard fiction model of finding out who committed a crime, but follows the activities of real detectives. This approach “further blurs the line between crime reporting as done by the news media and fictional crime dramas like CST: Crime Scene Investigation.” (Kort-Butler and Hartshorn: 2011, p. 36-37) This genre of “infotainment” is a logical extension of the trends we have noted above in relation to local news reporting. There is both a sense of reality and a sense of drama and story-formation. Real experts are interviewed, for example, and reconstructions are interspersed with analysis of actual artefacts, locations etc. This article concludes, rather worryingly, that “the public audience appeared to negatively evaluate the criminal justice system while simultaneously supporting more punitive policies” (Kort-Butler and Hartshorn: 2011, p. 48) These authors also found that “the more often people watched nonfictional crime programming, the more fearful they were of criminal victimization.” (Kort-Butler and Hartshorn: 2011, p.48) The evidence of these empirical studies from the United States shows that the nature of mass media, and of local news media and pseudo-factual crime programmes especially, is to focus on crime, pick out a biased sub-set of all the crime that occurs, and present it in a tightly scripted package which has a hidden message. Although there is less research available in Australia, it appears that the situation here is following a similar pattern. The police recording of crime reports that crime in Australia declined in six of the nine categories of crime between 2001 and 2003, and that crime rose only in three categories: assault (2 per cent increase); sexual assault (5 per cent increase) and blackmail/extortion (6 percent) (Indermaur and Roberts: 2005, p. 143). In spite of this, people consistently overestimate the incidence of crime, particularly violent crime, and studies have been conducted to investigate what factors could be causing this effect. There are some evident demographic trends: “men, younger people and the more highly educated people hold more accurate perceptions of actual crime trends” (Indermaur and Roberts: 2005, p. 146) The Australian Survey of Social Attitudes conducted in 2003 reveals that besides gender, age and education level, the type of media used by people may also influence their perception on crime levels. In a sample size of 4075 individuals, 27% were deemed to have accurate perception of crime rates, but the breakdown according to which media people relied on most for news and information shows great variation: Media relied on most for Per cent with accurate perceptions news and information of crime rates. Internet sites 44 ABC and or SBS television 34 Radio 31 Newspapers and news magazines 29 Talkback radio 25 Commercial television 20 Friends and family 17 Total 27 Source: Indermaur and Roberts: 2005. p. 148. These figures do not prove that people form their opinions as a direct result of the media that they listen to, but that people choose the media that most reflect their own views: “What is most likely then, is that individual views and audience-maximising media programming amplify each other through synergistic selection and reinforcement.” (Indermaur and Roberts: 2005, p. 148) Some aspects of crime and the criminal justice system are emphasized in the media, such as violence and murder, at the expense of less dramatic types such as fraud. There are, however, occasional white collar crimes which dominate media discourse on a global scale, and analysis of what is reported can reveal interesting hidden agendas. The scandal of Enron Corp in 2001 resulted in the bankruptcy of one of the largest corporations in America. Williams (2008) analysed 334 media articles on the subject of the corporate scandals of 2001/2002 from five publications, including the Canadian Globe and Mail and the international Economist. Key framing narratives were analysed, for example the explanation of the scandal as the work of a “bad apple” being one narrative, and the explanation that it was a systemic problem inherent in modern capitalism being another. (Williams: 2008, pp. 475-476). The media appear to be colluding in a pact with big business interests to show self-regulating mechanisms of capitalist systems rather than to explore the major crimes that occur. Williams argues that corporate crime is increasingly being reported in a way that decriminalizes many offenses, and large corporations are very skilled at shielding themselves from external scrutiny, even though the effect on ordinary individuals can be severe. (Williams: 2008, p. 494) In the light of these empirical studies it is important to note that any answer to our initial question about the effect of media on people’s perception of crime is bound to be couched in a number of qualifications. Ericson (1991, p. 221) reminds us that it is all too easy to make sweeping assumptions about media and people’s perception of crime and the criminal justice system. It is often assumed that the media distort information and that this directly influences people’s views and perhaps also behaviours in particular ways. Such a simplistic view does not reflect the reality of the modern world, however. Ericson identifies many different, and at times conflicting messages in crime programmes, news reports, publicity stunts, readers’ letters etc. and concludes that mass media are a form of discourse and that “exposure to mass media is therefore not a source of distorted thoughts and bad behaviour, as the ‘evil causes evil’ fallacy has it, but a means of constitution and articulating attitudes to and versions of crime, law and justice.” (Ericson: 1991, p. 242) We can conclude, therefore, that some people, especially older people, women and those who live in high crime areas may be disproportionally affected by some types of media representations of crime. Beyond this it is hard to make definitive conclusions. The institutions of newspapers, television, and also police and the court system are all part of a wider social network and they interact with each other in complex ways. The effects of media on viewers’ perception and fear of crime are real, but they are extremely nuanced, depending on a great many variables in the viewers’ own situation and in the type of media itself. References Chiricos, T., Padgett, K. and Gertz, M. 2000. Fear, TV News and the Reality of Crime. Criminology 38 (3), pp. 755-785. Dixon, T.L. 2008. Crime News and Racialized Beliefs: Understanding the Relationship between Local News Viewing and Perceptions of African Americans and Crime. Journal of Communication 58, pp. 106-125. Ericson, R. V. 1991. Mass Media, Crime, Law and Justice: An Institutional Approach. British Journal of Criminology 31 (3), pp. 219-248. Available online at: http://bjc.oxfordjournals.org/content/31/3/219.full.pdf+html Indermaur, D. and Roberts, L. 2005. Perceptions of Crime and Justice, in S. Wilson (ed.) Australian Social Attitudes: The First Report. University of New South Wales Press, pp. 141-160. Kort-Butler, L. A. and Sittner Hartshorn, K.J. 2011. The Sociological Quarterly 52, pp. 36-55. Williams, J. W. 2008. The Lessons of ‘Enron’: Media accounts, corporate crimes, and financial markets. Theoretical Criminology 12 (4), pp. 471-499. Yanich, D. 2004. Crime Creep: Urban and Suburban Crime on Local TV News. Journal of Urban Affairs 26 (5), pp. 535-563. Read More