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Newspapers are one way the media portray crime. Newspapers come in two types: broadsheets and
tabloids. The public can easily access online versions of all major newspapers. Press coverage of
crime, especially violent and sexual crimes, is very popular. Stabbings, shootings, and terrorist
attacks, for example. Studies found that 2/3 of crime stories in the news were stories of violent
crimes. Newspapers are known for ignoring the causes of events. This means they focus on
individual incidents, rather than what caused these incidents to occur. This can be seen in the 2011
London riots, where all major newspapers focused on the looting rather than the death of Mark
Duggan by metropolitan police. Furthermore, newspapers exaggerate the success of the police. This
could mean just releasing stories about cases that are being prosecuted or blending fiction and
information. Newspapers also tend to embellish extra information like more extreme statistics to
create scaremonger within society. Effectively this means people react to the crime and can create a
sort of ripple effect.

Film is another way that the media portrays crime. 1/5 of all cinema films are movies based on crime
with almost half cinema films including crime content. Many of these films tend to glamorise and
misrepresent crime. For example, the film ‘Craigslist Killer’ is based on a true crime however it was
given bad reviews for its lack of information about the murders and its music choices with
humanised and romanticised the killer. Films also create this idea that crime is a form of
entertainment, and it desensitizes people from violence. They also tend to feed into criminal
stereotypes by using the typical offender in most cases. Films such as Deadpool and many of the
other marvel films also add a comedic element to the crime and trivialise it.