This document is for anyone in year 12 - criminology unit 1 ac1.4 (EXAM BOARD - WJEC). This essay clearly describes the crime is represented in the media with explanations and relevant links to scenarios.
In AC1.4 I will be talking about the different social media platforms and the kind of crimes that are
most likely to be seen. I will also be discussing whether and why certain crimes are glamorised,
normalised, underrepresented and overrepresented.
Glamorised: to make something seem desirable or attractive
Normalise: brings something to a normal standard in society
Underrepresented: when something isn’t talked about enough
Overrepresented: when something is seen or spoken about too often.
Newspaper:
In newspapers, you are most likely to see murders or acts of violence reported instead of
white collar crimes. This is because violence cases are most likely to intrigue more
customers. Therefore, white collar crimes are most likely underreported as they are
classified as ‘boring’ by the general public and less likely to buy the newspapers, therefore
reducing the profits the newspaper companies such as The Sun or The Guardian make.
Depending whether a tabloid or a broadsheet, the way the crimes are reported will be
different. Tabloids, such as The Sun, tend to be more emotive and use more simplistic
language making it easier to target most audiences ranging from teenagers to the older
generation. Tabloids also tend to focus more on the victims of the crime and uses a lot of
images to make readers feel empathy for the victims and want to read on and therefore
intriguing the readers.
Broadsheets, on the other hand, tend to put their focus on the facts and statistics of the
crime that is being reported rather than on the victims. They also use a more complex
language and less images with more facts. Broadsheets also tend to give an explanation.
Examples of broadsheets are: The Telegram, The Guardian and The Times.
A type of crime often seen on newspapers is honour crimes. Most of the times honour
killings in particular. When broadsheets report crimes like Shafilea Ahmed’s case, there is a
lot of writing only one picture of Shafilea. There is also a lot of facts about the timeline
leading up to the murder and after the murder. There is clearly less emotive language with
the crime, they just want to get across the statistics surrounding honour killings.
However, white collar crimes are not reported by newspaper companies often if at all. The
case of Charles Ponzi, for example, did appear on newspaper articles but not as much as you
would expect. Most newspaper articles I have found had the title ‘Ponzi is now hopelessly
insolvent’ surrounded by other stories of murder cases. Other newspapers titled the story
‘the man who time (almost) forgot’ meaning that people forgotten about Ponzi as time went
by showing that the coverage on the story wasn’t enough to keep his name “alive” in the
media, therefore meaning the crime was underreported.
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