The History Of Crime News

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Crime narratives and representations are, and have always been, a prominent part of the content of all mass media. The proportion of media content that is constituted by crime items clearly will depend on the definitions of crime used (Sacco, 1995).

Most analyses of the content of media representations of crime have focused more narrowly on the legally defined category, not the broad sociological concept of deviance. Some studies only consider stories about specific criminal incidents, but others include reports, articles, or editorials about the state of crime generally, about criminal justice, and about criminal law violations related to political and social conflict, such as terrorism (Sacco, 1995).

Crime news exhibits remarkably similar patterns in studies conducted at many different times and places. From the earliest studies onwards, analyses of news reports have found that crimes of violence are featured disproportionately compared to their incidence in official crime statistics. Indeed a general finding has been the lack of relationship between patterns and trends in crime news and crime statistics (Davis, 1952).

A historical study of two British newspapers since the Second World War found that homicide was by far the most common type of crime reported, accounting for about one third of all crime news stories throughout the period. Other violent crimes were the next most common (Beckett and Sasson, 2000). However, there were significant shifts in the proportion of stories featuring other sorts of crime.

Recent studies confirm the pattern of increasing overrepresentation of violent and interpersonal especially sex crimes (Beckett and Sasson, 2000). Between 1951 and 1985 the number of rape trials in Britain increased nearly four times, from 119 to 450. In the same period, the number of rape cases reported in the press increased more than five times, from 28 to 154. The percentage of rape cases reported jumped from 23.5 per cent in 1951 to 34.2 per cent in 1985 (Soothill and Walby, 1991).

In the process of collecting and disseminating information on crime, media representations can negatively influence perceptions on crime related issues. Media coverage of crime can be inaccurate, biased and promote inappropriate and harmful policies on crime control (Yanich, 2001).The processing of media information on crime is based on short term, fast paced and surface level research, which can limit the types of information disseminated, and disregard crucial issues (Yanich, 2001). Often news reports of crime read like a police blotter of information including information on the offender, place of crime, and victim, with little devoted to the context of how offending or victimization occurs (Yanich, 2001).

According to Jeffrey C. Hubbard et. al. (1975), print media influences public opinion on crime trends by increasing coverage of certain crimes disproportionately to the amount of crime in a community (Hubbard et al., 1975). The way the news media represents crime often includes sensationalistic aspects of crime events, whereby newsworthy stories act on emotion more than on fact, and focus on negative images of crime in communities (Hubbard et al., 1975).

James C. Hackler, in his Canadian Criminology: Strategies and Perspectives (2007) argue that some crimes, such as white collar crime and environmental crimes are often overlooked by the media. According to him the intentional absence of these crimes to the hyper-publicized and over-politicization of crime, security and crime prevention and the harmful control of the private sector in lobbying politicians. The result can be inaccurate perceptions on crime and inappropriate policy decisions, which hinder effective and sustainable crime prevention strategies (Hackler, 2007).

Crime news has situated crime as a problem frame which fuels a fear of crime mentality, feeds on public opinion and perception, and strengthens repressive and tougher public policies on crime and criminal penalties. Kenneth Dowler (2003) asserts that the media’s obsessive focus on crime has resulted in over-exposure and therefore individuals who are highly exposed to violence in the media perceive crime as threatening, which increases a fear of crime, and therefore punitive attitudes (Dowler, 2003).

Understanding news representation and the social construction of news making requires an examination of the conscious and unconscious processes involved in the mass dissemination of symbolic consumer goods (Dowler, 2003). These commodities of news production and the images of social reality that they invoke are inseparable from their cultural histories (Dowler, 2003).

Moreover, mediated characterizations of crime and criminal justice, of criminals and social control, projected in news presentations are representations themselves of culturally shared visions accessed through commonly unfolding historical narratives, in which average people and most journalists come to know crime and justice in developed societies. In other words, crime and justice stories produced by news media for mass consumption reflect and reveal much about those societies’ views of themselves, good and bad (Dowler, 2003).

While most people understand that crime is part of the reality of life, and a legitimate subject for news coverage, the amount and nature of media coverage given to crime has come into question. Yanich (1998) argues that local newscasters in Baltimore and Philadelphia made conscious decisions to cover more crime news than any other social issue. They also decided what crimes they would cover and how they would cover them (Yanich, 1998).

Crime is a social phenomena and social construction linked primarily to how the State and the media manage crime (Lehman & Okcabol, 2005). People’s perceptions of locations and destinations are influenced by how the media interprets where violent assaults are committed by designating what are safe and unsafe areas (Lehman & Okcabol, 2005).

In South Africa as well, media consistently provides high levels of prominent coverage on crime. Much of this coverage is not referred to as crime per se, but the particular crime committed (Jere-Malanda, 2002). The media covers dramatic and exceptional crime on a consistent basis, sometimes at the expense of more systemic, less striking crimes such as gender based violence. Both, broadcast news and print newspapers give more prominence to stories of violence, rape and racism issues (Jere-Malanda, 2002). The reporting of economic crimes such as white collar crime is rare in all news.

But some researchers argue that some media also inflame crime in South Africa, especially the print media. Numerous research reports have directly or indirectly accused the South African press of contributing to antiforeigner sentiment, with one paper going so far as to claim that xenophobia in South Africa can be attributed to the formulation and publicity given to various anti-illegal views through the media (Jere-Malanda, 2002).

A concern about media representations of crime, in South Africa as well as around the world, has worried many scholars (Wykes, 2001). To them the media are the cause not of crime itself but of exaggerated public alarm about law and order, generating support for repressive solutions. Many journalists said the ethical dimensions of crime reporting are the subject of newsroom debates. Nonetheless, the news imperative almost always ensures the reporters will cover sensational crimes (Wykes, 2001).

The issue of sensational reporting, particularly of crime and corruption, has been the subject of extensive debate in South Africa. Thabo Mbeki, former South African president, and many government officials have complained that the press is undermining the interests of the country by giving prominence to reports on crime (Retief, 2002). The development model of the media suggests that journalism is obligated to help improve the image of South Africa both at home and abroad. Critics say the failure to accentuate the positive and the insistence on splashing negative images on front pages has had damaging results to national identity (Retief, 2002). Arnold S de Beer has noted that this image is especially tied to South Africa, where rates of murder, rape and domestic violence are among the highest in the world. Added to this are perceptions, conveyed in the international news media, of Africa being on the brink of total collapse due to unbridled corruption, civil wars, the scourge of HIV/AIDS sweeping over the continent (De Beer, 2003).

Although journalists rarely mentioned the issue of race when they discussed their reporting on crimes, media scholars and critics have made clear connections. De Beer sees a persistent fear of the black majority as being apparent, especially in the conflict-ridden reports on crime, racial polarization is again the order of the day through news reporting that creates the perception of blacks being the cause for the tide of crime engulfing the country, while it fuels white fears and crew racial strife (De Beer, 2003).

Robert Entman`s research looks at the ways in which news coverage stereotypes black in the United States of America, but his observations have application to the case in South Africa. According to Entman, the specific realities depited in single stories may accumulate to form a summary message that distorts social reality. Each in a series of news stories may be accurate, yet the combination may yield false cognitions within audiences (Entman, 1994).

South African media have a major influence on the general representation of crime in the country. The images that permeate popular consciousness of crime are mainly generated by, and reflected in, the electronic and print media. In this way the media have a tremendous impact in terms of how crime is generally defined in society (De Beer, 2003).