Recent work on homicide and the media has focused on the United States. This study considers the British context and examines the coverage of homicide by a leading British newspaper (The Times) over a period of 23 years (1977 to 1999 inclusive). The focus is on the newspaper coverage of the top cases each year and over the whole period. This approach allows for an exploration of the hierarchy within 'media-homicides' that are distinguished in terms of 'mega-cases ', 'mezzo-cases' and 'routine cases'. Hence, this issue is shown to be a more complex social and cultural phenomenon than is usually understood through the traditional binary 'reported-non reported' approach. The importance of unusualness and cultural context is emphasised in fully understanding how homicides become, particularly, mega-cases.
This study describes the reporting trajectories of the 13 cases that received the most coverage in a leading British newspaper, The Times, over a period of 23 years (
The Times Index is a well-established and important paper resource for researchers that is perhaps not fully recognized. Using a study on ‘Homicide and the Media’ as an exemplar, this article considers the strengths and weaknesses of the Index.The Index will usually provide better focus into the researcher’s area of study than CD-ROM searches, and can identify stories which CD-ROM searches miss. A modest quality control study indicates its accuracy, but it is stressed that a quality control test is study-specific.
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