Essay
Unit 1 criminology- 1.4 Describe the media representations of crime
- Module
- Criminology unit 1
- Institution
- WJEC
This a perfect to AC 1.5, for year 12 criminology students.
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By: davidokeke44 • 1 year ago
By: drewmarch • 2 year ago
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1.4- Describe Media representation of crimeNewspapers
There are many types of newspapers, for example “popular press” (the daily mail) or
“quality press”(the guardian). As well as daily papers (sunday times) or local papers
(the eastern daily press). Newspapers are dedicating more time to crime and tend to
focus on “sensational stories”. Newspapers represent children,women,middle class,
white and older people as victims. This is mainly because the newspapers want the
reader to feel sorry for the vulnerable victims, as it will often make the reader more
interested in the article, this leads to them buying another newspaper in the future.
Ignoring the causes, newspapers focus more on the incident rather than the actual
cause of the crime itself. For example report of rape tend to focus on the victim
rather than the patriarchy (male dominance).
Newspapers mainly do this because readers usually just want to know what has
happened and not why it has happened, and fits the news value of “dramatisation”
(action and excitement). Therefore newspapers often want to include exciting stories,
for example they tend to focus on crimes that are violent or sexual. However,
statistics show that a majority of crimes are minor property crimes, for example
shoplifting. Even though most criminal acts are minor “murder seems to take up ⅓ of
all crime reports”.
Television
Crimes on television are sometimes real but can also be fictional. In crime news,
there is a strong focus on violent crime, similar to newspapers. Violence is often
entertaining and shocking to watch or listen to, therefore it takes up most crime news
to not be boring and makes us keep watching. TV also tends to portray offenders
and victims as white.
However, in reality, the office of national statistics shows that there are 32 arrests
for every 1,000 black people, and 10 arrests for every 1,000 white men, therefore it
could be argued black people are offending more than white people. TV news also
may not want to put false stereotypes or prejudiced views in the public's head about
black people and crime and therefore TV shows will not make them the offenders. In
crime fiction the police are portrayed in a positive light, for example in line of duty
cases are usually solved and everything ends well. Therefore the public watching
these shows will view the police as protecting civilians and treating everyone equally,
however this is not always the case, for example George Floyd was killed by a
policeman due to lack of breath, who knelt on his neck after George saying he
couldn't breathe multiple times. Crime fiction also tends to focus on property thefts,
these tend to be over exaggerated, for example burglary even though most property
crimes are petty thefts for example shoplifting. Including over exaggerated property
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