Essay Sample on Mass Media, Crime and Criminal Justice

Introduction

From the earlier 20th century, the American mass media has been focusing majorly on crime and justice issues; there has been more focus on the graphic accounts of the scenes where the crimes occurred. The introduction of television and its subsequent popularization in the earlier 1950s has increased the way crime is being featured on the media, entertainment and news programs have both been focusing on issues of crime and justice. In this research article, we will focus on the way the media presents the ideological content for crime and justice, the way certain crimes are selected by the media for coverage, how the media influences the high profile criminal trials, the impact that the media coverage has on public policy and opinion about the particular crime and the fear of victimization by a person who is focused as a criminal by the mass media corporations. The paper will also focus on how the mass media reports crime happenings in news programming and entertainment programming. There is a need to understand the framework through which the behavior of the mass media presentations can be understood; it is also critical to understand the mass media decision-making process and assess the perspective of the imperatives of individual companies, the way the journalist develop their news headlines. This way, we can be able to determine the implications that the coverage of the media has on society. There will also be a focus on how the coverage of crime by the media has instilled the fear of crime in the society.

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The production of mass media has two main objectives; mass media is supposed to dispense information to the public in a manner which is thought-provoking and a way that will lead to the growth of democracy in the society. It should be however noted that the mass media organizations are privately owned entities and this makes them focus on making of profits. Because of this, the media has developed a public sphere dichotomy whereby citizenship is promoted through the information, social integration and education, this way, the public is presented with information which is aimed at allowing the citizens to learn about the occurrences which occur around them and in some cases get involved. This means that the media has to present information which is popular with the citizens so that they can be able to make profits. Media decisions are made based on the market model (Greer, Chris & Robert 245). Crime is viewed as the content which most members of the public are interested in, by using crime, mass media corporations can make more sales and increase their profits. Crime as also been assessed to be a newsworthy topic to be featured in the mass media news programming. However, the features which determine the intensity of reporting of a particular crime event differs. For instance, it can be noted that crime which features an offender who is a black male and victim who is a white female or where there is a male offender who is white a victim who is a white woman tend to receive more intensive coverage. The case is similar in the mass media entertainment sector. The script has to be developed in a widely accepted format so that it cannot offend the audiences so that the company loses its market share and profits. This is because of the market model which the decisions of the mass media corporations are based on.

Media also reports crime as a way of creating social awareness in society. However, according to some studies, crime is just reported in a manner which represents objective reality and not focused on creating awareness. In some cases, the intensity of the crime which was presented in the media was not consistent with the official statistics about crime. The disconnect between the official statistics and the media reports is the realities which exist in the organizational production of news. Mass media production houses focus on the themes of the news so that they can be able to influence society. The reliance on the sources of criminal information which the news agencies use. The government agencies and mass media producers both have an interest in the information about crime and criminal justice. Journalists who are the mass media agents are focused on representing the factual information as it is on the ground whereas in most cases, the government agencies usually focus their information on several aspects so that they can create a good public relationship (Schildkraut, Jaymi & Kimberly 223). Because of this, the news agencies might rely on unofficial sources to get information about the crime; this is because the official sources might limit their coverage on the matters of crime and criminal justice.

The media coverage on crime has a lot of implications in society. One of the major effects of the coverage is the creation of moral panics in the society. Crime is now being viewed as a threat to the social norms, interests, and values in the society because of the way that it is being reported in the mass media corporations. The impact of the crime coverage on the media has also led to a fear of crime. The exposure that viewers have on the media towards the realities of crime changes the perspective they have towards crime. Because of these realities, many people now fear crime and the way that crime is committed.

By looking at the existing information about the coverage of crime on mass media, further studies need to be conducted on determining the way the news reporters select the crime news which will be covered. There is also a need to develop further studies on the way features of the news which is covered by the media, and the location are related. Attention should also be focused on how the local news is presented on the television. The existing the research mostly focuses on newspapers; there is a need to develop research on newspapers so that the issue of media coverage on crimes can be understood.

Conclusion

In conclusion, it can be seen that research has been conducted in different aspects of media coverage on matters of crime and criminal justice. However, there is a need to conduct more research so that the way the decision-making process in the mass media industry can be understood. Through this paper, we have been able to develop an understanding of the framework that explains the behavior of the media. The implications that the coverage of the media about the matters of crime has on the society and the imperatives which influence the way the media makes decisions.

Works Cited

Greer, Chris, and Robert Reiner. "Mediated Mayhem: Media, crime and criminal justice." (2015): 245-278.

Schildkraut, Jaclyn, H. Jaymi Elsass, and Kimberly Meredith. "Mass shootings and the media: Why all events are not created equal." Journal of Crime and Justice 41.3 (2018): 223-243.