The Construction of Crime and Justice in the Media

There has been an historic interest in crime, this is evident even in the earliest media.

• Very soon after the discovery of the printing press, newspapers begin.
• Examples of newspapers focusing exclusively on crime can be found as early as 1600.
• Balladeers were the forerunners of reporters
• Treason, murder and witchcraft were among the favorite topics.

• By mid 1600s newspaper weeklies were regularly printing court activities.
• Some of the themes of that era are very simple to what gets dispensed today.
• Through the eighteen and nineteenth century, street literature was the most common vehicle. (broadsides, pamphlets, sermons, speeches)

• Similar to today, news contained both information and entertainment
• Well into the eighteenth century American Press controlled largely by political parties paid more attention to political editorials than to factual reporting.
• English press of that time had much more emphasis on the factual and the criminal.

• Until the penny press emerged, readership of early newspapers remained sparse.
• Before a mass press can exist, there must be a literate population.
• By the 1830s literacy became sufficient to support mass circulation and the penny press was born
• Crime, a favored topic of the penny press

• The New York Sun first included a daily police court news column in 1833. It was very popular.
• Soon, all of the penny press had crime features.
• Class oriented these early papers portrayed crime as the result of class inequities and a process often manipulated by the rich.

• They often had concerns about due process and advocated legal changes.
• It wasn’t long before the penny press were soon lamented as contributing to the corruption and licentiousness of the young.
• Lawyers were soon criticizing the penny press for their lax reporting of crimes and court activities.

• Before the end of the nineteenth centuries attorneys were complaining of pre trial publicity.
• Lawyers were complaining of trial by newspaper.
• At this time discussion began as to how the influence of these newspapers were beginning to supercede parental influence.

• Spurred by the success of the penny press a number of weeklies soon emerged. The most famous of which was the National Police Gazette.
• By the beginning of the twentieth century a series of magazines flourished focusing on sex scandals, corruption, sports, glamour, and show business.

• These news weeklies were an early model for modern proactive news creation and trash TV.
• With demand for a steady supply of certain types of news, reporters began to specialize
• The emergence of specialized reporters signaled a major change in the news business.

• With a large and accepting market, newspapers changed seeking to perfect new and newspapers as salable commodities.
• They changed from being argumentative, politically oriented, emphasizing editorials, to politically neutral, more sensational, less confrontational and more supportive of status quo.

• The marketing cycle for newspapers at the turn of the century was to periodically offer sensational news, attract a new audience and then return gradually to less sensational offerings. (then the cycle would repeat)
• In the 1890s there was Yellow Journalism
• Another wave of sensationalism in the 1920s.

• Historically it appears that crime held sway from 1830- 1850. Media interest declined until the 1890s when interest returned.
• Since the 1890s media interest in crime has remained steadfast.

• From the 1830s until the 1850s reporting remained a cross between stenography and journalism. Coverage was often taken verbatim from court records.
• The Civil War and the development of the continental telegraph system led to the modern journalistic style of brevity and neutrality.

• The standard lead paragraph (quickly summarized the whole story)
• Subsequent paragraphs contained additional and less news worthy details.
• Stories could be rapidly edited by cutting off the bottom paragraphs.
• The news became less analytical and evaluative and more factual and descriptive

• Crime coverage began in earnest again in the 1890s with the introduction of Yellow Journalism.
• This new style of Journalism gave space to scandals, disasters, gossip and crime particularly personal violent crime.
• Large headlines and melodramatic depictions of heroes and villians

• There was an entertainment value to this reporting.
• Gradually they broke into two competing genus, the upwardly mobile and informational (Wall Street Journal) and the more entertainment oriented aimed more at the working class (New York Daily News, USA Today)

• Crime is depicted individualistically, and portraits are constructed that foster the crime control model.
• Details of crime are given, little attention is paid to crime as a social issue.
• Police replace the courts and transcripts as the source of stories.

• Increased reliance on official sources marks the beginning of the skewing of stories toward a law enforcement vantage.
• Publicity about a criminal was seen a useful example of the wages of sin to others.
• The factual reporting of crime did not change much until the rise of investigative journalism in the 1960s.

• In the 1920s radio came to dominate as the home entertainment and information medium. The number of stations increased from 32 to 254 between 1921 and 1922.
• Radio news established a style of on the scene reporting, live and first.
• The current 30 to 60 second spots on television today were pioneered by radio.

• The electronic news would give saturation coverage then move on to the next topic.
• Weekly news reels were also developing .
• Radio produces created that style so familiar today, short term, visceral, emotional news coverage.
• These presentation styles set the standard for crime reporting.

• The news media and the entertainment media are remarkably similar in the distorted image of crime they portray.
• Two models for new creation:
• The market model (public interest)
• The manipulative model (news owners)
• The key to both is worthiness, the criterion by which they pick content.

• The news the public receives is capsulized , stylized information that limits the News Carrier’s liability.
• The organization process of transforming social events into news, by its very nature, makes it impossible to render an objective, unbiased mirror image of reality.

• The bulk of news is not discovered by journalists it is formed by them.
• They offer a reality shaped by their choice of one source rather than another.
• Specialization develops source patterning.
• The construction of crime news can be described as the coupling of an information processing system, the government & media

• Newsworthiness is defined by:
• Periodicity (matched to scheduling needs)
• Consonance (fits in with previous stories)
• For crime news seriousness is the key issue
• Need to routinize the unpredictable, this leads them to be co-creators.
• In their efforts to routinize the news they come to rely on standing social institutions as sources.
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• Crime news becomes an organized stable of news, it is popular, it is almost always available and you can prepackage it.
• Comes from police, it can be gathered at relatively low price.
• Crime events need little introduction or prior preparation of the audience

• A function of:
• the type of crime interacting competitively with other news
• a reporters time and interest
• willingness of sources to provide information
• quality of information being supplied

• Lowest- crime stories that serve as filler
• Secondary crime stories potentially important depending on their characteristics
• Primary are those stories given top billing
• At the very top are the super primary crime stories using involving celebrities or major social or political figures.

• Public interest and entertainment style presentation increase with the level.
• Stories are usually made to fit a standard crime news frame
• Responsibility at the individual level
• reaffirmation of moral boundaries
• final resolution through capture and prosecution.

• The key gatekeeper is the crime reporter.
• They undergo a process of socialization and gradually their attitudes begin to become similar to the police.
• A steady stream of stories demands a stable source of information.
• Crime reporters gather their information by being given it by police

• The PIO is a second gatekeeper.
• Interaction with the reporters use to be ad hoc, disorganized and based on personal relationships.
• PIO coordinates the flow of information.
• Public Information Officers begin to see "selling of the department" to the public.

• While the reporters and the Public Information Officers remain key, other sources have also arisen.
• The Public Information Officer makes sure that the police department remains the key source.
• Both police and the news media find the continuing relationship positive.

• The vast majority of crimes never become news. Less than 1% ever appear in the newspaper, even less than that on TV.
• The gatekeepers filter out the cases.

• Novelty
• Crime waves (crimes against the elderly)
• Continuing Story…
• Other press join in (copying is a way of life)
• A crime wave is created, creating more copy.
• A crusade is born.

• Crusades by the media are important:
• They influence criminal justice policies
• They also decrease publicity for other events that may be more significant but they do not fit within the current crusade.