Phase 2 IP

Lucretia Rossi

CJUS600-1301A-01

Advanced Review of Criminal Justice

January 21, 2012

RE: Media Perception

Unfortunately, it seems that the media has more influence over the justice system, as well

as policy, than any other force in our society. People tend to believe that what they see in the
media is accurate, from how evidence works as shown on crime shows, to a suspect’s guilt or

innocence based on the news and speculation of media mouthpieces like Nancy Grace. I have

found that the media is rarely, if ever, unbiased. The media has the capability to effectively deny

a fair trial, especially in cases where national attention is gained. Regardless of my personal

feelings on the Casey Anthony case, it was sensationalized in the media nationwide before she

was even arrested. A change of venue to another county is not going to do any good in a case

like that, because of the extensive national attention on the case. Further, while potential jurors

are specifically asked if they can disregard what they’ve seen in the media, no, they can’t. You

can’t un-hear or un-read something. I do not believe that a person has the capability to

completely disregard the news coverage they’ve seen. Other examples of this were the Rodney

King case, O.J. Simpson, and the Kobe Bryant case. Despite my personal opinions of these cases

or their resolutions, the media attention to the trials, and the effect of that media attention, are

still valid points.

One of the major problems is that the ACLU, an organization supposedly dedicated to

educating people on their civil rights, released an absolutely moronic statement that crime and

cop shows are “an excellent legal education for the public” (McNeely, 1995). This is particularly

outrageous since a large portion of their staff are attorneys and/or otherwise legal experts. There

is, in my opinion, no way that they did not know this statement to be false. I personally find

programs like Law & Order and CSI to be more comedic than anything else.

Another point of interest is when it comes to unsolved crimes. It’s always slung around

that police somehow aren’t doing their job properly. Do I think this happens sometimes? Yes.

But part of the problem with these crime shows is that they always catch the bad guy. Well, it

doesn’t work that way. Leads dry up. Sometimes there just isn’t enough evidence. It happens.
Even if there is enough to get an arrest warrant, which doesn’t always happen, it still has to be

enough to convince a grand jury to indict, and ultimately, a trial jury. Also, I’ve found that the

news media always tends to blame police. There are certainly cases where police handling of

evidence was so shoddy that it certainly gave a jury reasonable doubt. One example was the O.J.

Simpson case. Irrespective of my opinion of his guilt, there was certainly reasonable doubt.

However, just because there is no arrest or no conviction does not mean police are incompetent

or lazy. But that always seems to be the conclusion drawn by the news media.

Another media trend I’ve noticed is that when a violent crime happens, or crime rates are

high, police supposedly aren’t doing their job. There’s one flaw in this perception. When a

person is going to commit a crime, they don’t call and notify police of their intentions. Further

police can’t be everywhere all the time. For example, where I live, there are 29 total police

officers. This includes more than patrol officers. This number also includes all detectives, the

chief of police, et cetera. The population, however, is 18,396 (City of Logansport IN, 2012). This

ratio is especially small when one considers that for such a small city, we have an astounding

amount of gang activity. The Latin Kings are particularly bad here. Yet people tend to think, and

so does the local paper, that police can be everywhere at all times to prevent crime before it

happens. The media coverage of crime definitely can amount to fear-mongering. Many studies

have shown that the media’s barrage of reporting on violent crime creates a “discourse of fear.”

The same is true of sensationalistic cases, which are actually media-generated. Cases become

sensational because the media covers them on a daily basis. This affects public policy and public

perceptions of social issues (Altheide, 2003), and, as I pointed out earlier, sometimes even the

outcome of the trial. Because the media focuses so intently on violent crime, people seem to

think that the problem is worse than it really is. Even when crime is on the decline, increased
media coverage can give the public the impression that crime is increasing, just by increasing the

amount of crime coverage. I do not necessarily think this is intentional on the media’s part. But

they know what sells and they deliver. But this delivery has been shown again and again to skew

public perception. It’s a kind of catalyst, a self-sustaining circle. Also, in sensationalist cases, the

increased media coverage can give people the impression that cases of that particular type are

much more common than they really are (Romer, Jameison, and Aday, 2003).

Probably one of the weakest points of our justice system is how much sway the media

holds, not only over policy, but over individual prosecutions as well. A good example is the

Trayvon Martin case in Florida. Even though police were not going to arrest Zimmerman, and he

wasn’t going to be prosecuted (even though that was a very ludicrous interpretation of a “stand

your ground” law…), until the national media swarmed. The national media coverage was often

crying for a federal probe, and the federal government then stepped in and encouraged

prosecution. Now, take the influence that the media has over policy, and combine it with the fact

that economic and marketing considerations determine news content (i.e., they print what will

sell the most papers), this is especially disturbing. Marketing and commerce should have no

effect on our criminal justice policy. Period. There is ample evidence from the social sciences

fields (sociology, social psychology, et cetera) that the media skews public opinion and causes a

public demand for more punitive laws. Around, 2000, every single jurisdiction in the U.S.

adopted more punitive policies, in both the justice system and the correction system. Also, every

state passed at least one law that allowed for trying more juvenile offenders as adults. This

cannot be fully explained by the rates and types of crime occurring. The television news’

coverage of crime is disproportionate to its coverage of other social problems, by leaps and

bounds. Not only does this affect people’s beliefs about crime prevalence, but, as social sciences
studies have found, makes it a more important criterion when people decide who they’re going to

vote for, thus influencing policy in a second way. Starting in the 1980’s and still continuing

today, the mandatory minimum sentencing laws have been compounded by more severe federal

sentencing guidelines and extremely punitive recidivist statutes (Beale, 2006).

Demographics and perception of police effectiveness, and the justice system generally,

are certainly influenced by the media. It’s been so well-studied that it is referred to as “the social

ecology of crime.” The viewer’s perceptions and life experiences play a major role in how they

interpret things, such as the news. The news focuses on some social problems while almost

completely ignoring others. Another factor that interplays with this fact is that how the reports

are “framed” makes a difference. Whether the news report implies individual responsibility

(episodic) or societal responsibility (thematic) was a well-documented impact on how people

will perceive the news report (Altheide, 2003). Research has shown that media coverage of

crimes with white victims drastically outnumbers coverage of crimes with minority victims.

Crimes with female victims are covered more than crimes with male victims. Younger victims

are covered much more than older victims. Crimes involving multiple victims or offenders get

much more coverage than crimes with one victim and one offender. In other words, “crimes with

statistically deviant characteristics…are more likely to be covered by the media than crimes with

statistically normal characteristics (Paulsen, 2002). This is why there is the impression that

blacks commit most crimes against white people, that women are the bulk of society’s victims, et

cetera et cetera. The media has a way of making the population as a whole believe things that are

statistically not true, just by slanting the reporting, or only reporting on certain crimes.

References

McNeely, C. J. (1995). Perceptions of the criminal justice system: Television imagery and public
 knowledge in the united states. Journal of Criminal Justice and Popular Culture, 3(1), 1-

20. Retrieved January 18, 2013, from

http://www.albany.edu/scj/jcjpc/vol3is1/perceptions.html

City of Logansport, IN. (2012). Population and Police Personnel. In City of Logansport, Indiana.

Retrieved January 18, 2013, from http://www.cityoflogansport.org/

Altheide, D. L. (2003). Mass media, crime, and the discourse of fear. The Hedgehog Review, 9-

25. Retrieved January 18, 2013, from http://www.iasc-

culture.org/THR/archives/Fear/5.3CAltheide.pdf

Romer, D., Jameison, K. H., & Aday, S. (2003, March). Television news and the cultivation of

fear of crime. Journal of Communication, 53(1), 88-104. doi:10.1111/j.1460-

2466.2003.tb03007.x

Beale, S. S. (2006). The news media's influence on criminal justice policy: How market-driven

news promotes punitiveness. William and Mary Law Review, 48(2), 397-481. Retrieved

January 18, 2013, from http://scholarship.law.wm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?

article=1103&context=wmlr

Paulsen, D. J. (2002). Wrong side of the tracks: exploring the role of newspaper coverage in

socially constructing dangerous places. Journal of Criminal Justice and Popular Culture,

9(3), 113-127. Retrieved January 18, 2013, from

http://www.albany.edu/scj/jcjpc/vol9is3/paulsen.html