NCJ Number
157083
Editor(s)
G Barak
Date Published
1995
Length
331 pages
Annotation
These 11 papers examine how the mass media has changed over time in its depiction of crime, criminals, and victims and how these depictions reinforce particular forms of social control.
Abstract
The analyses conclude that media presentations of crime and justice news are subject to and inseparable from political, economic, and social struggles and that the media can be a forum to help promote new understandings of crime and social control. The authors believe that criminologists should take part in media presentations of crime and justice to make some news more representative and less distorted about the social reality of crime. Individual papers examine newspaper journalism and social control in a Montana town in the late 19th Century; national media coverage of lynchings in the United States between 1882 and 1930; the prevalence of crime in the news; the contemporary mass media portrayal of predatory criminality; and newspaper coverage of an average murder case. Further chapters examine the proportion of crime stories in national reporting of State news; the interaction between the police and the news media; the relationships between criminologists and the media; and potential roles for criminologists in newsmaking. Figures, tables, chapter reference lists, and author biographies