The Media Influences on the Criminal Justice System Essay

All over the world people are fascinated by crime and deviance. It is believed that the media can effectively engage the entire public's fascination and the media can increase people's fears about crime, media has dramatically influenced the justice system either directly or indirectly. Occasionally, media acts as the primary public sources of information on crime this Are possible because individuals do interact this enhancing significant social alienation. Due to the higher level of interaction there tend to be an increased dependence on media, both the mainstream and social, media for news and updates on the regional and local scope and has also enhanced the reliance on the state or the populist forces to cope with any perceived danger.

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The economic tensions are determining the contemporary treatment of criminal activities and violence by the media and the coverage plays a significant role in reshaping public opinion leading to criminal justice. The overrating of the nature and extent of crime in reporting the challenge of news consumptions and thus the public is alarmed about the safety of their society. Both the mainstream media and social media serve as the primary source of information and boosts public opinions, for instance, the public pressure can influence specific political decisions and even shapes certain crime judgment that is viewed to be having public interest. Most of the sensational crime reporting has greatly been of interest to most of the newspapers and enhance their ratings.

Currently, the community seems to be relatively violent due to the advancement of the media industry and public anxiety has heightened as a result of the growth and development of computer technologies, film, and television. Moreover, most of the media when covering and reporting about a crime, trials, and prosecution, tend to emphasize more on the personal aspects such as the victims' emotional experiences and the other hand tend to ignore the stated objective statistical data and comments from the experts regarding the issue, however, this strategy tends to emphasize the punitiveness that is associated with the criminal act but gives less attention to the facts that can assist to inform the public opinion.

It is believed that the media's emphasis on the personal issues of violent crime enhances a practical reaction to the viewers such as extreme fear of criminal activities. Again, most researchers have concluded that there is an increased fear due to the high exposure to the media news. Generally, the media play an essential role in the determination of the connection between the institutions of justice and the public perception of the same.

The crime coverage tends to attract more viewers; thus the media will do absolutely any story on crime since the current economic considerations motivate the media and newsworthy thus may at times dramatize the crimes. The specific style of reporting such as by the media in indulging the victim or their family members in an interview is likely to affect the criminal investigation in progress and may also dispose of specific or classified information that the investigative department never intended to be put in the public limelight.

In some instances, the media can cover or film an arrest which may, in turn, trigger the public to feel that the police force is conducting their duty on a biased jury. There is the infinite power I the media and their coverage that can improve significantly the criminal justice system operation and even the outcome of some cases. Due to the media coverage, the image of the institution is determined by the public.

The media possess the power to determine who needs to face the charges; induction or conviction and it can compel the outcome of the criminal case. Many of the researchers debate that the media can socially formulate stereotypes, the physical features and even the history of the offender, the crime that the victim is capable of committing, how the acts of misconduct are committed and thus can inform the investigative agencies on what decision to make. Therefore, the justice accountability majorly depends on the way media portrays an individual in connection to the alleged crime.

The media plays an essential role in comprehending criminal justice in several ways, such as media serves as a comparator which sets a moral benchmark between the bad guys and the good ones; it helps in representing economic and socio-political context that events occur and how it influences the public; the media can expose criminal justice that is odds with the official definitions, facilitates the punishment assumption and the vigilante; popular media also create real-world experiences that are helpful, and those that are irrelevant and finally the popular press describes the different gender and how this can influence an individual's behavior to either be an aggressor or victim for any justice sanction, for instance. Media will trail the history of crimes and the way each was handled to enhance comparison and even influence the judgment bade on the proposed precedence.

Most of the contemporary performance crimes are formulated to spread via the social either directly or indirectly, and such performances are relatively ephemera renditions continuously built and digitally spread to potential consumers. Therefore, this has brought changes in society and developing new stressors on the criminal justice system. The outcome has been a muted recognition of the substantial effect of the shift on justice and crime and the emerging performance crime. The reading of the newspapers or watching the television have been replaced by the act of social media such as tweeting and going viral and thus making the audience to be active participants and to the performance resulting as features of the media content.

Moreover, the trends enhance a massive amount of different crime and justice acts by the law enforcement bodies, victims of criminal acts and the judicial institution is vividly understood via the performance. The social media has dramatically influenced the degree at which the individuals follow the trails and stories of crime and justice and facilitated the public to participate in the process significantly and facilitates the noticeable being performance crime within the community. The rise of the social media has significantly changed the content of the consumers and the distributors of the crime and justice news and trails of a specific case. The media can give clear paths and details of the alleged criminals and help in the investigation process of that particular victim. The commercial pressure can affect directly or indirectly the news media treatment of crime and violence; therefore the outcome coverage has played a primary role in the alienation of the public opinions and even the criminal justice policy. Most of the popular media both local and international do treat the crime news by adjusting to meet the perceived viewer demand and expectation since the media fraternity is majorly run by the economic factor aiming at maximizing on their profit, for example, a newspaper will put a crime investigation on the headlines to increase sale. Therefore, the market-driven treatment of crime in the news media and has the power to skew public opinion and thus to facilitate the support for various punitive policies and laws. Moreover, through the setting of agenda, the media focus the public interest about crime and the existing justice system.

Conclusion

In summary, the media fraternity tends to frame and facilitate fear of crime and to instill desirable behavior on the citizens. The media news has significantly influenced the public opinion by the way in which the interaction among the various individuals within the criminal system. However, the media needs to be controlled to ensure that the classified information does not reach the public hence many regulations have been formulated to help keep the media in close check and to monitor the media's operations.