Just Noise? Newspaper Crime Reporting and the Fear of Crime

Roberts, Martin; Cook, Dee; Desai, Suki

doi:10.1080/09627250108552956

Cited by 5 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…Since the pivotal British studies of the 1970s (Chibnall, 1977;Cohen, 1971;Cohen and Young, 1973;Hall et al, 1978;Young, 1971), scholars of crime news media have pointed to the over-reporting of violent and sexual crime and the potential for increased public fear of crime and consequent public support for more draconian criminal justice measures (Ericson et al, 1991;McLaughlin, 2002, 2003;Kidd-Hewitt and Osborne, 1995;Mason, P., 2003;Reiner et al, 2003;Roberts, 2001;Surette, 1998;Wykes, 2001). More specifi cally, it has been repeatedly suggested that the news media misrepresent sexual violence against women (Carter et al, 1998;Greer, 2003;Howe, 1998;Soothill and Walby, 1991).…”

Section: Crime Gender and The Newsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Conflation, collocation and confusion

Mason

Monckton-Smith

2008

Journalism

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Despite research to the contrary, a recent British Home Office report by Kelly et al. (2005) notes that in public consciousness a 'real rape' is perceived to occur in a public place, is perpetrated by a stranger and involves aggravating violence. Further, it notes that such skewed perceptions are implicated in the high attrition rate that this offence attracts in the United Kingdom. This paper suggests that a significant factor in the reinforcing of this skewed perception is the reporting of violence against women in the print media. It is argued that murders of women are regularly sexualized by journalists and conversely that sexual assaults of women are framed within a discourse of murder. Through a discourse analysis of six case studies of rape and/or murder of women by men between 2003 and 2004, this research contends that the habitual linking of the concepts of sex and death in such reporting, which in some contexts effectively produces a conflation of the offences of rape and murder, contributes to the way in which rape is received by criminal justice professionals, victims and the wider public. KEY W O R D S criminal justice discourse murder public opinion rape sex crime women Context: sexed crime, public opinion and the media Statistics tell us that most rape assaults in the United Kingdom do not end in the death of the victim and that the vast majority are committed by friends or acquaintances (Harris and Grace, 1999; Karlberg and Hackett, 1996; Kelly et al., 2005). However, a perception still persists in the public consciousness that a 'real' rape occurs in a public place, is committed by a stranger and involves aggravating violence. The latest British governmental research published by the Home Office (Kelly et al., 2005) suggests that these skewed perceptions of the offence have a very real impact on successful criminal convictions for rape in the United Kingdom, with high rates of attrition at all stages of the criminal justice process. The number of reported rape cases ending in a conviction has fallen in the United Kingdom from 33 percent in 1977 to 5.29 percent in 2004 (Office for Criminal Justice Reform [OCJR], 2006: 8). One explanation for such a dramatic fall in convictions is the rise in reporting of rape as a result of heightened awareness in women who are victims, but occurring alongside a persisting failure in criminal justice professionals and the wider public to recognize sexual violation when it occurs. Despite the advances achieved by the women's movement in reconstructing rape as violence and not sex, (Bevacqua, 2000) this skewed perception of rape dominates and, as will be argued in this article, is linked to discourses of sexual murder, and in some contexts the two offences of rape and murder are often conflated. Crime, gender and the news Perhaps we should not be surprised that, in public consciousness, rape is regularly conflated with potential or fatal violence. Violent offenders like the Yorkshire Ripper 1 and Jack the Ripper have often-inaccurately-been described both in the med...

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Section: Crime Gender and The Newsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Conflation, collocation and confusion

Mason

Monckton-Smith

2008

Journalism

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“…The media are perceived to 'shape the accepted realities about crime and justice directly and indirectly' (Indermaur and Hough, 2002: 202) creating a 'growing interdependence of media representation and social "reality"' (Reiner, 2002: 408). This relationship has been a cause for concern for those claiming that the media's infl uence leads to exaggerated fear about crime and increased support for repressive criminal justice policies (Schneider, 1978;Williams and Dickinson, 1993;Freiberg, 2001;Roberts, 2001;Reiner, 2002;Ditton et al, 2004).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Criminologists making news? Providing factual information on crime and criminal justice through a weekly newspaper column

Feilzer

2007

Crime, Media, Culture

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This article summarizes the findings from a two-year research project, funded by the Nuffield Foundation, which explored the impact of a criminologist presenting factual information on crime and criminal justice through a weekly column in a local newspaper. The research included a natural quasi-experiment, the impact of which was assessed through a large-scale survey and in-depth interviews with members of the public. The key finding from the research was that readership of the column was low (although not as low as survey responses initially indicated), and that the column had no measurable impact on readers. The findings suggest that interest in, take-up, and retention of factual information on crime and criminal justice is not as high as previous empirical research has suggested.

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Black Men Down: An Assessment of Experts’ Quotes on Deadly Encounters with Police

Crichlow

Fulcher

2017

Race Soc Probl

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Just Noise? Newspaper Crime Reporting and the Fear of Crime

Cited by 5 publications

References 2 publications

Conflation, collocation and confusion

Conflation, collocation and confusion

Criminologists making news? Providing factual information on crime and criminal justice through a weekly newspaper column

Black Men Down: An Assessment of Experts’ Quotes on Deadly Encounters with Police

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