Can crime reporting increase the publics fear of crime?

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Can crime reporting increase the publics fear of crime?

Firstly, this essay will briefly outline the reasons behind the concerns of crime in our society and the importance of tackling this issue. This essay will then explore the mechanism behind crime reporting and how the media exaggerate and distort facts to produce sensationalised articles causing an increase in the publics fear of crime.

Today, perhaps never as vividly before, crime stands at the centre of public consciousness. The mass media serve up a regular diet of stories of rising crime, vulnerable victims and callous offenders. The public persistently voice their fears and anxieties about crime in opinion surveys and in official government studies prioritising their concern with the issue. The success of the police in dealing with the crime problem in general comes under ever more scrutiny, and the effectiveness and rigour of the criminal justice and penal systems generate never-ending controversy. It is clear that crime constitutes a major realm of societal concern (Bilton et al, 1996).

The most important factor in determining what is in the news has become known as ‘agenda setting’. The media effectively determine which issues become the focus of attention and have the power to make one issue dominate public debate and concern. This is particularly significant in relation to criminal activity as the media are generally the publics main source of information. The police also play a significant role in setting the ‘crime agenda’. It is suggested that the media and police are reliant on each other – the media need the police for news material and the police need the media as a means of communicating with the public. The police actually set the crime agenda which may or may not be a realistic portrayal of current criminal activity. For example, a type of crime may be high on the crime agenda but infrequent in reality because an increase in police press may cause the increase of news overage (Abercrombie, 1994).

In general news reporting, the agenda is set by various factors ranging from spontaneity - sudden events such as murder; elite centred ‘crime’ news – this relates to a celebrity committing an offence be it minor or otherwise and extraordinaress – events which are considered ‘out of the ordinary’. Interestingly, this can be compared with the Gaurdians advice of news priorities issued to new staff in the 1960’s:

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 Significance – social, economic, political, human.

 Drama – the excitement, action and entertainment in the event.

 Surprise – the freshness, newness, unpredictability.

 Personalities – royal, political, ‘showbiz’.

 Popular ingredients – sex, scandal, crime.

 Numbers – the scale of the event, numbers of people affected.

 Proximity – on our doorsteps or 10,000 miles away (Hetherington (1985) cited in Townroe & Yates, 1995).

Such guidelines are adopted by journalists to identify what makes an item ‘newsworthy’. Moral panics are dramatic expressions of the medias agenda setting power. An example of this is the ‘mods and rockers’ and how the press reported events at Clacton 1964. What ...

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