What I think I learned from:
MEDIA, PROCESS, AND THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF CRIME:Studies in Newsmaking Criminology
Edited by Gregg Barak

Note: This paper was written at the beginning of FCC deregulation of corporate control over the content of news, and the relinquishing of editorial control and news direction from the original gatekeepers to the corporate accountants.

1. Media, Society, and Criminology
   1. The model of the media as a process that contributes to social conformity and consensus is thought to work through the symbolic rewarding and punishing of good and bad deeds.

      1. Symbolic Rewarding	Identifying heroes, villains, and neutral characters and associating them with specific traits, beliefs, or kinds of behavior.
         Symbolic Punishment	Labeling or stigmatizing certain activities or traits as antisocial, deviant or undesirable.

      2. Rewarding and punishing can be explicit or through unspoken assumptions such as "I'm a Republican. I wash my hands after I go to the bathroom."
      3. "Whatever is normal requires no explanation or justification, while whatever seems to challenge normality is suspect"
      4. The news media helped to frame opposition to the Vietnam War as respectable, only after the war had lost its legitimacy with not only the anti war activists and demonstrators, but with a section of the established elite as well.
2. Crime News in the Old West
3. Communal Violence and the Media: Lynchings and Their News Coverage by the New York Times between 1882 and 1930
   1. News accounts of reality are always subject to distortion generated by "structural" and "human" factors
      1. Technology base
      2. "Invisible" hand of the marketplace.
      3. Human Factors: behaviors and policies of interests or individuals who created the agenda or else censor the agenda.
   2. Reporting on crime is highly selective and biased.
      1. Only report unusual or celebrity suicides.
      2. Overreport homicides
      3. Ignore crimes where there is no clear victim
   3. Ethnic and Race Factors
      1. Over-report on interracial or ethnic crimes.
      2. Underreport on crimes within ethnic communities of minority status.
   4. Moral Entrepreneurs: Groups or individuals who make the larger society socially aware of crime issues, and by doing so, create news interests in these events.
      1. John D. Rockefeller's commission publicized commercial prostitution.
      2. Nancy Reagan's "National War on Drugs"
      3. Capable of convincing the public that a crime-wave exists, regardless of actual shifts in crime.
   5. Presentation of crime

      1. Presentation of Crime
         Large amounts of local crime	Large amounts of non-local crime
         Large public perception of fear exaggerated	Public perception of safety is exaggerated.
         As certain common crimes become more rare and considered unique, the more frequently they are covered by the media.

4. Crime in the News Media: A Refined Understanding of How Crimes Become News
   1. When Joseph Pulitzer changed the news focus of the New York World from political news to crime and tragedy, circulation jumped from 15,000 to 250,000. William Randolph Hearst used the same prescription to increase circulation of the New York Journal at the beginning of 1900
      1. By studying crime news production, students of crime and crime control can develop an important understanding of the news media's role in shaping society's attitudes and policies toward crime and victims.
   2. The Production of Crime News
      1. What the news media presents and what the public learns about crime are specialized images that are distorted by the newsmaking process.
      2. The news media do not distort reality in a random fashion; in fact, it is done systematically
      3. News organizations are dependent on sources to produce crime news. However, source organizations are equally dependent on the media.
      4. Source organizations have their own organizationally determined set of criteria that influence the presentation of crime.
      5. News organizations selectively choose the source organization's version of the "truth" to produce a story."
      6. Stories that are more likely to be selected for presentation as crime news are those crimes which are novel, dramatic, and simple.
   3. Research Methodology
      1. Content Analysis
      2. Ethnography
         1. Ethnographic analysis of the selection, production, and editing decisions of both a newspaper and a television station.
   4. Importance of Crime News
      1. Crime news can be found throughout an entire newspaper or any time during a broadcast.
      2. Crime is frequently commented on by editors and citizens in the opinion sections of a paper.
      3. Issues ad nauseam are gun control, the death penalty, drugs, found in the opinion pages.
      4. Crimes can appear in sports pages and the entertainment sections as well.
      5. Sports and business stories are among the most popular topics for readers.
   5. Crime News as Information
      1. Provides the public with protection and knowledge
      2. Provides the public with opportunities to protect themselves against crime.
      3. "An informed citizenry is an armed citizenry."
      4. The media are attempting to inform the public of a potential danger (curious patterns of burglary, etc.)
      5. Reporters do not like contacting victims of rape but rape is one of the most underreported crimes and something the public should know about.
   6. Crime News as Deterrent
      1. Potential criminals allegedly pay attention to the news. Exposure of arrests and convictions might deter them.
      2. One objective of criminal justice source organizations is to deter law violators from committing certain types of crime.
      3. Research shows that thirty fewer homicides occurred in those months where executions were publicized compared to months where no executions were publicized (Stack, Steven. 1987. "Publicized executions and homicide, 1950-1980," American Sociological Review. 52:532-540.)
   7. Crime News as Entertainment
      1. Crime delivered through any medium capitalizes on the public's fascination with gore and pathos.
      2. Whether a person laughs, cries, reflects, or reads with disinterest depends on the reader's own "symbolically created reality."
   8. Crime News Reflecting the Nature of Criminal Justice
      1. Each crime goes through a number of stages in order to be fully processed.
   9. The Newsmaking Process Used to Fill this Gap.
      1. A large news hole exists for crime stories that must be filled every day because of their popularity.
      2. Content analysis performed for this study indicated that the six newspapers covered an average if nine crime stories a day. Three television stations covered four.
      3. The media establish convenient access to source organizations from which a pool of potential newsworthy crimes are available for story selection to fill the gap. Thus, criminal justice sources are critical to the production of crime stories.
   10. Crime News Selection
       1. The news organization routinizes the crime newsmaking process in order to satisfy its organizational needs by developing mutually convenient relationships with criminal justice sources in order to process crime news and keep it entertaining.
       2. The number of crimes available are larger than necessary to fill the crime news gap because the media's access to criminal justice organizations is largely uninhibited.
       3. In order for a crime to become news, there first must be an official acknowledgment of it by a criminal justice source. The media-source routine, and its resulting access, ensure that individuals working for police and court organizations are the primary sources cited within crime stories. Thus, reliable sources are cited while the media maintain a cloak of objectivity.
       4. Source organizations benefit equally from the media's reliance on them because they determine the pool of crimes available for crime news selection. Sources control which crimes are presented as well as what is provided about them.
       5. Judges who are elected rather than appointed face the possibility of being portrayed as soft on crime and can consequently prejudice sentencing decisions toward higher degrees of severity.
       6. Reporters who are persistent and aggressive when asking questions may lose their jobs (New York Times, 3/1/92: A21)
       7. Reporters do stand to lose information access if they negatively report on their source's performance.
       8. Selection decisions are influenced by mutual cost/benefit calculations made by both the media and source organizations.
   11. The Production of Crime Stories
       1. Some crimes might be news but lack information for follow-up.
       2. Other crimes are news but are not covered because of their relationship with the source. Some crimes become important news stories, some are interesting, and others are written simply to fill space.
       3. Determining different levels of crime newsworthiness. Some stories are produced differently depending on their level of newsworthiness. The four levels are "tertiary," "secondary," "primary," and "super-primary." [See table at bottom of page]
   12. Tertiary Crime Stories
       1. Space fillers. These stories are written so that at least some crime gets into the paper without taking much news space.
       2. Fulfill organizational needs
       3. They have an unknown potential to develop into a higher level story.
   13. Secondary Crime Stories
       1. Potential to be important news
       2. Requires more organizational resources.
   14. Primary Level Crime Stories
       1. Reporters and editors enjoy working on these more interesting stories.
       2. Get the lead in the metro section.
   15. Super Primary Stories
       1. Extra Extra Sensational
       2. Jeffrey Dahmer, Unabomber, Heavens Gate, Branch Dividians,
   16. Conclusion
       1. Future research needs to consider how the presentation of crime varies across these different levels, as well as why these additional elements raise the newsworthiness of crime.
5. Predator Criminals as Media Icons
   1. Predator Criminals and the Social Construction of Criminology
      1. The crimes that dominate the public consciousness and policy debates are not common crimes but the rarest ones.
      2. It is useful to conceptualize social reality as a changing, socially created phenomenon, not as fixed or universal, but evolving and subjective.
      3. In dealing with society, people use world models to group and understand factual information and to simplify and direct their decisions and social behavior. These models are constructed over time from information gained through social interactions and personal experiences.
      4. An individual's direct experience makes up what has been termed "Objective Reality". All animals experience objective reality.
      5. Humans have access to another source of knowledge about the world known as "Symbolic Reality." Language, art, math. Most people in the world learn more from symbolic reality than from objective reality.
      6. Objective reality and Symbolic Reality combine to become "Subjective Reality."
      7. The mass media has evolved in present-day America to become the dominant player in the symbolic reality realm, and by default, in the subjective reality construction process.
      8. Although individual crime myths fade and are cyclic in nature, their effect on our conception of crime and justice linger because they provide knowledge that becomes permanently incorporated into our socially constructed world models. This process is enhanced as new events are constructed within the framework of previously constructed myths. The most prevalent, longest running crime myth promulgated by the media is that of predator crime: a media icon that has been unchallenged for a century.
   2. The Genesis of the Predator Icon.
   3. The Empirical Reality of Predator Crime
      1. Gottfredson and Hirschi (1990) argue that media emphasis on the atypical but highly publicized crime is a serious source of misinformation and false perceptions of the true nature of crime
   4. Devotion to the Predator Icon
      1. Individualism at the personal level is related to an American focus on close individual relationships and an avoidance of contact with large groups and organizations. Collective responses are seldom conceived or pursued. Personal responsibility is more highly regarded. This firm belief in individual responsibility is reflected in our vigilante tradition.
      2. Individualism leads to micro-social solutions to crime.
         1. Security devices, guns, private protection agencies.
         2. When enclaves feel threatened by crime, the ones that can afford it become garrison communities.
      3. The culture of individualism also affects our perception of the cause of crime.
         1. Forwarding personal and interpersonal moral explanations.
         2. Predating mass media, the traditional causes of crime have been seen as individual flaws or flawed relationships between individuals. Organizational relationships traditionally have not been given much weight.
      4. The media do no argue any clear set of policies, they reflect the cultural focus on the micro-community of family, close friends, and individuals in their content regarding social problems and their solutions.
      5. In our media and in our culture, social problems are generated and solved at the individual level. Because of this, Americans lack the cultural resources to deal with relationships between culturally, socially or economically different citizens.
      6. Large organizations, government, and business corporations are shown as distant, distrustful, and frequently dishonest, things to be avoided wherever possible.
      7. When crime is solely blamed on individuals failure, even nonpunitive anti-crime policies will emphasize intensive individual rehabilitative or educational efforts rather than policies that deal with social contributors.
      8. This emphasis on individual explanations and solutions hurts people at the bottom of the social hierarchy who need a package of policies that incorporates both social solutions as well as personal responsibility.
      9. Audience fear, mystification of the criminal justice system, artificially generated support for punitive criminal justice policies, and increased tolerance for illegal law enforcement practices are all concerns.
   5. Icon Effects
      1. helped to make the United states one of the most punitive countries on the planet, while ironically simultaneously forwarding the myth that we are overly lenient.
   6. Conclusion
      1. The most basic effects of the predator icon are to generate fear, degrade social networks, increase reliance on the media, and foster social isolation and polarization.
      2. The continuing disparity between media constructed reality of crime and justice and the nonmedia reality of crime and justice results in the public receiving an unnecessarily distorted image that supports only one anti-crime policy approach, an expanded and enhanced punitive criminal justice system -- an approach lacking evidence of success.
6. University Professor or Sadistic Killer? A Content Analysis of the Newspaper Coverage of a Murder Case.
   1. Case review
   2. Research Concerns and Questions
      1. Portrayal of the Defendant/Victim
         1. Besides the Lindbergh Baby Kidnapping trial of Bruno Richard Hauptmann, there was little research regarding portrayal in the news.
      2. Guilt Attribution
         1. The media's impact on courtroom proceedings is reliant upon the jury selection process.
         2. Most of the literature find that pretrial publicity increases probability of guilt attribution, even after jury deliberation.
         3. The newspaper may report that the defendant refused a polygraph test, implying guilt to the reader, but having little relevance in the courtroom.
         4. Another possibility occurs when the press prints statements of unqualified people it often invests "with a 'halo effect' and the material with authenticity." This could result in a statement by a witness at the trial that the prosecutors or defense attorney did not ask the "right" question, the outcome of the trial would have been different.
      3. Prejudicial Factors
         1. Specific items of news that either do not make their way into evidence at the trial or that come to the attention of jurors before the trial unconfronted or unexamined.
         2. A number of factors that could be prejudicial: Are many and varied in nature.
            1. Identity testimony
            2. Credibility of a witness
            3. Possibility of a guilty plea
            4. Opinion as to the guilt or innocence of the accused.
            5. Characterization of the crime itself.
      4. Three Core Questions
         1. How was the accused portrayed in the newspaper coverage of this murder case?
         2. Did the coverage attribute guilt to the accused after the jury had reached its verdict of innocence?
         3. What, if any, prejudicial factors against the accused were incorporated into the newspaper coverage of this crime?
   3. Data and Methodology
      1. News Coverage in varying Stages of the criminal justice process [see the table]
         1. Pre-Arrest / Arrest
         2. Pretrial / Trial
         3. Post-Trial / Trial
      2. List of prejudicial factors for content analysis
         1. Characterization of the crime
         2. Characterization of the accused
         3. Statements or information that were not submitted or allowed in court
         4. Statements or testimony given untested or unsupported authenticity.
         5. Individuals given untested or unsupported credibility
         6. Opinions about the guilt of the accused.
   4. Findings
      1. Pre-Arrest / Arrest Stage. Track prejudicial statements published [see table 6.3]
      2. Pretrial / Trial Stage
      3. Post-Trial Stage
   5. Discussion
      1. Prejudicial Factors
         1. The study was concerned with six potentially prejudicial factors. Each newspaper article was carefully examined to ascertain if it contained one or more of the six factors [see section 6.C.II ] and compare with [table 6.3]
      2. How the Defendant Was Portrayed
      3. Attribution of Guilt
   6. Conclusion
      1. Although there was considerable coverage that tended to be prejudicial toward the accused, the jury still found the defendant not guilty based on its interpretation of the testimony and evidence.
      2. Research has determined that publication of statements and / or information by the news media often results in unwarranted credibility and authenticity being given to those who provided those statements or information.
7. Murder and Mayhem in USA Today: A Quantitative Analysis of the National Reporting of States' News
   1. Introduction
      1. In a study conducted before the proliferation of television, evidence was presented that there was no relationship between official crime statistics and crime as reported in the print media. The study indicated that the public perception of crime depended almost entirely on what was read in the newspapers.
      2. Two widely held assumptions.
         1. The mass media is one of several sources of information
   2. Methodology (188)
      1. Graber's differentiation of news topics was used to prevent duplication of recordings.
         1. Crime and justice (subdivided using the Uniform Crime Report or Federal Crime Index)
            1. U.C.R. Index
            2. Murder
            3. Rape
            4. Drugs
            5. Corporate
         2. government and politics
         3. economics and social issues
         4. human interest and family
      2. Analysis
         1. The selection of crime material in USA Today followed a pattern found in Roshier's work. 4 sets of factors which seemed to establish why some crimes were selected in preference to others:
            1. The seriousness of the offense
            2. "Whimsical" circumstances, i.e., Humorous, ironic, unusual
            3. Sentimental or dramatic circumstances; and
            4. The involvement of a famous or high-status person in any capacity.
      3. State Comparison
         1. In 1990 Arkansas was listed at the top of the list of states in the study.
      4. Crime Reporting and Official Crime Statistics
   3. Conclusion
      1. The data suggested that reporting of major crimes is not based on official crime statistics or state populations.
      2. The media reporting on a few sensational crimes in low crime rate states can distort the true amount of crime in those states.
      3. Many times lesser crimes are reported not because of the event, but because of the circumstances surrounding the event, the notoriety of the individuals involved or the humor that is present.
      4. The accuracy of the reporting of criminal acts will always be compromised by the "newsworthiness" of the incident.
8. Patrolling the Facts: Media Cops and Crime
   1. Critical Interactive Perspective
      1. Textually Mediated Reality
         1. We are constantly engaged in textually mediated forms of action which affect our perceptions and influence our actions in society.
         2. We engage in textual materials daily as we read the newspaper or watch television.
         3. The news and TV do not merely monitor the events of the real world, but rather they construct representations and accounts of reality based upon the conventions, ideologies and the organization of journalism and news bureaucracies.
         4. Textual discourse of the mass media presents the world as a textual construct, in which belief is a commitment to one construct rather than another.
   2. Ideology and the Police
      1. The information about a crime is constituted not as it happened, but as the police force bureaucracy wants it understood publicly.
      2. The police and the media reinforce each other's organizations through their exercise of power and control in their joint construction of mediated texts for the public.
   3. Ideology and Organizations of the News Media
      1. It is argued that there are structural relationships that filter out information and limit what can become news in the U.S.
         1. "Sourcing, " the issue of what constitutes a credible source. The dominant sources tend to flood the market.
            1. Allegedly official sources carry with them the assumption of credibility.
            2. In a recent British study of the media, judges, lawyers, and court officials appeared in national daily newspapers as the second highest source of news, followed by police and law enforcement sources, whereas social workers, such as probation and prison workers, were the least used as a source of news.
      2. Three major categories that penetrate the popular consciousness, representing the dimensions of social control in any society. These models are used in the mass media to control persons as well as to put on "significant dramas and rituals."
         1. Praise (Heroes to be positive role models.)
         2. Condemnation (Villains to be negative models of evil to be feared, hated, and ridiculed.)
         3. Ridicule (Fool)
      3. According to Parenti (1992), television drama has influenced the public perception of police and the legal system. The more time people spend watching television and movies, the more their impression of the world resembles those of the "make-believe media."
      4. Almost 1/3 of all prime-time shows since 1958 have been concerned with law enforcement and crime.+
   4. Celebrity Media Cases Portraying Police
   5. Conclusions and Implications
9. Newsmaking Criminology: Reflections on the Media, Intellectuals, and Crime
   1. Hegemony, Mass Communication, and Bourgeois Capitalism
   2. Media Bias -- Left or Right?
   3. Ideology, Mass Media, and Public Knowledge of Serious Crime
   4. Newsmaking Criminology and Crime Themes
   5. Newsmaking Criminology Exemplified
   6. Conclusion
10. Becoming a Media Criminologist: Is "Newsmaking Criminology" Possible?
    1. Introduction
    2. The Problems Related to Trying to Communicate Criminology Through the Media
       1. When reporters move social science from the domain of the disciplines into the domain of the news, they strip it of certain features, such as complex statistics, and recast it in terms compatible with the norms and procedures of journalism.
       2. Given that social scientists use terms such as "significant," "consistent," or "power" in ways that journalists assume the general public will not understand, journalists feel compelled to translate such terms into everyday speech.
       3. When journalists misinterpret statistical data they usually err in the direction of "overinterpretation."
       4. When a study reports that something might be the case, reporters sometimes present the results in a more black-and-white style.
       5. The fact that a study may be preliminary is on occasions omitted.
       6. The reporter may know what story he or she wants to write in advance and uses social scientists and their research simply to support their preconceived idea.
       7. Journalists sometimes seek to use scientists to enhance their own credibility.
       8. Broadcast journalists are more likely than print journalists to have a preconceived story line while print journalists more frequently allow a story angle to develop out of the facts, because broadcast journalists have less time to work on the stories.
       9. Some journalists believe that only social scientists with an ideological point to make would seek publicity for their research.
       10. Reporters tend to rely most on "authorities" who are either most quotable, or quickly available, or both, and they often tend to be those who get most carried away with their sketchy or unconfirmed, but exciting data -- or have big axes to grind, no matter how lofty their motives.
       11. Scientists of this stature also gain an aura of credibility from their media publicity, that often leads them into careers as "experts" who testify in criminal court.
       12. Once there was a fear among reporters that experts will become too familiar to the public if they are called upon too often. Now however, they simply get on the payroll.
    3. Personal Experiences with the Media
    4. The Advice of Expert Media Communicators on How to Handle the Various Media Formats.
       1. Because of the risk involved in appearing on camera, one should be cautious in accepting requests for interviews. Prior to agreeing to a television interview, one should ask the reporter the following types of questions.
          1. What is the purpose of the interview?
          2. What type of interview will it be?
          3. Why have I been selected?
          4. Who will be conducting the interview?
          5. What is the technical and physical setting of the interview?
          6. How long will the interview be?
          7. Who will the audience be?
       2. While criminologists must certainly present intellectual material, when they appear in the media, their message will have to be articulated in such a ways as to reach the widest possible audience. Blythin and Samovar suggest the following techniques for media presentation:
          1. Start with your main point first
          2. Be brief
          3. Relate to your audience
          4. Be accurate
          5. Don't flaunt your expertise.
          6. Don't be evasive.
          7. Stay calm -- even during difficult moments.
          8. Make effective use of language.
          9. Try to establish and maintain your personal credibility
       3. If the situation turns into a debate or heated discussion between you and the interviewer or other panelists, the following suggestions may be helpful:
          1. Be quick to identify which questions are being used to bait you and which are legitimate.
          2. Never allow incorrect statements to stand. Respond to them immediately. Otherwise the audience will believe they are true.
          3. Avoid debating. Be the rational and calm one. Use "defusers" to cool down heated questions (e.g. "If I were in your position, I might be inclined to agree") [never say that because people will hear only the last six words.]
          4. Don't repeat negative questions, only make positive points.
          5. Be very cautious in the use of statistics. Try not to use more than two statistics per utterance, and make them of the same "denomination."
    5. Conclusion
11. Newsmaking Criminology as Replacement Discourse.
    1. Making Crime News
    2. Styles of Newsmaking Criminology
       1. Disputing Data: The Criminologist as Expert
          1. Challenging published news reports and crime stories with a dispute about their content.
          2. It may involve charges of omission, but more importantly, new or alternative data to correct the original image.
          3. Letters to the editor, open forums, or being known in the media as an available criminological expert to be called on by journalists as an issue becomes a hot and ongoing story.
       2. Challenging Journalism: The Criminologist as Journalist
          1. Criminologists should take over the authorship of crime news articles rather than allow themselves to be used as subjects or sideshows within them.
       3. Example of Deconstruction and Reconstruction of replacement discourse.
          1. Crime rates vary within ethnic, racial, and cultural groups. (Deconstruction)
          2. The simple distinction between black and white falsely assumes racial purity. (Deconstruction)
          3. Economic and social conditions and generations of prejudice by persons and institutions are linked to crime rate data. (Reconstruction)
          4. Global comparative perspective leads to alternative conclusions (deconstruction and reconstruction)
       4. Self-reporting: The Criminologist as Subject
       5. Confronting Media: The Criminologist as Educative Provocateur
    3. Conclusion