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Chapter 1
Crime, Justice, and Media
Chapter Objectives
After reading Chapter 1, students should:
1. understand the importance of the relationship between media, crime, and criminal
justice
2. appreciate how criminal justice policy is impacted by the media
3. know the history of crime-and-justice media
4. understand the basic differences between the types of media
5. understand how different media content is related to media crime-and-justice portraits
Chapter Outline
I. Media and Criminal Justice: A Forced Marriage
A. Why we study crime, justice, and the media
1. Crime and justice provides a substantial portion of the media’s raw material
2. Popular crime and justice stories are framed, packaged, and marketed
3. Media portraits of crime and justice influence public perceptions of:
i. What behaviors should be criminalized
ii. Who should be punished
iii. What the punishment should be
iv. How police, judges, attorneys, correctional officers, criminals, and
victims should act
4. Contemporary technology compounds media influences
i. Technologies such as PDAs, cable television and satellite networks,
VCRs, the Internet, electronic games, virtual reality devices, mobile
communications devices, and social media platforms create faster and
broader access
ii. Have created a hyperactive media environment
1. New, high-speed media world dominated by entertainment
value and visual images
5. Effect of crime and justice in the media on policy
i. Examples:
1. Uncle Tom’s Cabin influenced slavery laws (mid-1800s)
2. I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang affected U.U. correctional
practices (depression era)
3. The Silence of the Lambs influenced serial killer threat policies
(1980s)
B. Media-rendered portraits often drive crime-and-justice practices
1. Memorial criminal justice policies (see Box 1.1)
2
i. Named for individuals who are usually innocent victims of heinous
crimes
ii. Result from massive publicity
1. Examples:
a. Megan’s Law
b. Amber Alerts
2. “Three Strikes and You’re Out” legislation
i. The cooption of the kidnapping and murder of Polly Klaas
3. Much of criminal justice policy exists because of high profile crimes being co-
opted as campaign symbols
4. Local criminal justice issues tend to spawn broad-based policy responses
i. Contemporary media often cover local crime through a national lens
1. Raises some newsworthy crimes to national prominence
2. Media portrays local crime as beyond the ability and resources
of local criminal justice agencies
3. Solutions to crime painted as sensible are always given a
punitive federal orientation
5. A secondary reason for studying the media, crime, and justice is public
worries most about a set of more visible concerns
i. Examples:
1. Media-orientated terrorist events
2. Copycat crime
3. Coverage of media trials
4. Media-linked social violence
ii. The criminal justice policies we support and pursue due to the media
ultimately affect these issues as well
6. Media ultimately influences how tax dollars are spent
i. Determines how we react to crime
1. Determined by what is visual, newsworthy, entertaining, and
salable
a. Criminal justice policy has become a national political
issue
b. Crime has become another media commodity
II. The Blurring of Fact and Fiction
A. Everyone is wedded to media through one or more of the following:
1. Internet
2. Television
3. Movies
4. Music
5. Video games
6. Multi-purpose new media devices
B. Media provide the broadly shared, common knowledge in our society independent of
occupation, education, and social status
C. Media knowledge is generally perceived as less important and more transient but
more entertaining and enjoyable
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D. Technological progress is broadening media’s reach
1. Concerns have grown about:
i. Direct criminogenic media effects on:
1. Copycat crime
2. Media-oriented terrorism
ii. The reality the media create unduly influencing the public’s view of
reality
E. The snapshots of reality the media present provide the public a dramatic but reshaped
and marketed narrow slice of the world.
1. Public awareness of the unrealistic and heavily edited nature of media content
does not deter the public from being influenced
2. Media influence is particularly strong where alternate sources of information
are less available
3. Media-generated perception of crime-and-justice reality is exploited by both
the media and criminal justice policy makers
F. Looping
1. Results when events and information are repeatedly cycled and recycled
through the media into the culture to reemerge in new contexts in differing
media
i. Example: police car chase video cycles from courtroom evidence, to
local news footage, to infotainment program content, to a clip inserted
in a comedy movie, to Internet sites
2. Causes the blurring of fact and fiction
i. People come to believe that fictional events are real, that real events
didn’t happen, and that hybrid events are common
1. Many believe that Hannibal Lector is a real serial killer and
Jack the Ripper is fictional
2. Real events such as World Trade Center terrorist attacks
become hopelessly confounded in a blur of factual and fictional
claims
ii. People no longer trust the news but seem willing to believe
entertainment
G. Media and technology are simultaneously perceived as both a major cause of crime
and violence and a powerful potential solution to crime
1. Media is blamed for many social ills
2. Media is also expected to help reduce violence and drug use, deter crime, and
bolster the image of the criminal justice system
i. Law enforcement and the media
1. aids in criminal investigations
2. aids in manhunts
3. aids in street and vehicle patrols
ii. Courts and the media
1. look to media for assistance in:
a. processing criminal cases
b. reducing case backlogs
4
c. conducting trials
d. presenting testimony and evidence
e. deciding guilt
iii. Corrections and the media
1. look to media images for our perception of correctional
institutions, programs, and personnel
2. look to media to enhance security and surveillance
H. The love-hate relationship of the media-criminal justice marriage is the most
important relationship that exists for criminal justice policy
1. The media are blamed for many of the behaviors the criminal justice system
has to deal with
2. Media are simultaneously looked to for solutions to the problems found in the
criminal justice system and society
3. Studying the media-criminal justice marriage is key to understanding the
historical development and the future of crime and justice in America
III. A Brief History of Crime-and-Justice Media (See Table 1.1)
A. Media is structured along two dimensions
1. Types of Media
2. Types of Content
B. Types of Media (see Table 1.1)
a. Legacy Media
i. Print
ii. Sound
iii. Visual
b. New Media
i. Has hastened the blurring of the types of content by providing
simultaneous access within one device to all types of content
ii. Often combine print, sound, and visuals in new ways
C. Print Media
1. First medium to generate mass market (1830s)
2. U.S. penny press newspapers
a. Example: New York Sun: included daily police-court news column in
1833
i. Other penny dailies followed suit, and human-interest crime
stories quickly became a staple
ii. Class-oriented: portrayed crime as a result of class inequities
and often discussed justice as a process manipulated by the rich
and prominent
iii. Frequently contained due process arguments and advocated
due process reforms while presenting individual crimes as
examples of larger social and political failings
iv. Their success led to a market for weekly crime magazines
1. By the twentieth century, magazines focusing on crime,
sex scandals, corruption, sports, glamour, and show
business all flourished
5
2. Provided an early model for contemporary news and
modern television programs, mass marketing, and the
consumption of crime infotainment
3. Detective and crime thriller magazines and “dime” novels
a. Social concerns with the popular media originated with these products
b. Escapist literature: described crime as originating in individual
personality or moral weakness (as opposed to originating due to
broader social sources)
c. Downplayed wider social and structural explanations of crime found in
the earlier penny press newspapers
i. Helped reinforce the status quo
d. The “heroic” detectives in these works closely resembled the criminals
they apprehended—calculating and often odd loners
e. Similar to contemporary portraits of crime
i. reinforce the existing social order
ii. promote the impression that competent, often heroic
individuals are pursuing and capturing criminals
iii. encourage the belief that criminals are easily recognized
iv. encourage the belief that crime is ultimately curtailed through
aggressive law enforcement efforts
v. their print media icons were repeatedly replicated in radio,
film, and television programming
4. Comic books
a. Introduced in the 1930s
i. Evolved out of the newspaper-based comic strips of the 1890s
and combined with the twentieth-century pulp magazine
market
ii. Reality-crime comics appeared in 1942
1. based on true crimes and criminals
2. most popular type of comic book genre between 1947
and 1954
b. Feature the following:
i. Crime-fighting policeman
ii. Private detectives
iii. Costumed superheroes
c. Socially influential: marketed to both children and adults
i. Most popular among young males, particularly into the 1980s
ii. Have declined in popularity since initial introduction
1. industry came under attack in the late 1940s and early
1950s due to questionable subject matter
a. Outcry and criticisms resulted in a self-adopted
industry code that banned torture, sadism, and
detailed descriptions of crimes
2. have been replaced by other types of media such as
video games
6
iii. Persist as part of the multimedia web
1. their crime-and-justice portrayals still prosper via
licensing deals that span films, video games, toys, food,
cartoons, and television shows
d. Contemporary print media vs. contemporary digital media
i. Contemporary print media flourishes within new media venues
1. Text in the form of chat rooms, blogs, tweets, and
postings have been compressed in length but multiplied
in form
2. Much communication today is via the “printed” word
but does not involve an actual printed page
ii. Similarity: messages of print media and electronic media are
similar
iii. Major difference is access to their content
1. Print media is easier to select for viewing or to avoid
based on consumer preferences
a. To access, the consumer needs to be literate,
gain access to the materials, and make a clear
decision to use or not use them
2. Electronic media is “mass” media and is difficult to
avoid
D. Sound Media
1. Pure audio media have evolved from vinyl records to 8-track tapes, to
compact discs, to MP3 files, and other digital forms
2. Bridge print and visual media
a. Deliver information in a linear fashion akin to print while evoking
mental images and emotions analogous to visuals
3. First delivered and mass-marketed via radio networks
a. In the 1920s, radio networks dominated as the home entertainment and
information medium
b. Radio portrayals of crime differed from movie portrayals in that radio
portrayals were purely audio, and not visual
i. However, “hearing is believing,” and hearing the sounds of a
crime can be an emotionally gripping event
c. First to have live, on-the-scene news
i. Established by the following:
1. Hindenburg explosion (1937)
2. the Lindbergh baby kidnapping trial (1935)
3. the Scopes “monkey” evolution trial (1925)
d. Radio producers created the style that television would embellish:
i. short-term, visceral, emotional news coverage of discrete
“crime events”
e. Radio drama, at its height during the 1930s and 1940s, included crime-
fighting, detective, and suspense programming
i. “Radio Noir” programs included the following:
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1. The Shadow
2. Sherlock Holmes
3. True Detective
4. Gang Busters (began in 1935 and is the forerunner of
current crime stoppers and Most Wanted style
programming)
5. Dragnet
a. Transitioned to television in the 1950s
b. Established the format for the 1950s television
docudramas based on police procedures and
investigations
4. The suspense programming found in radio was a forerunner for the more
graphic visual effects found in today’s media
a. Mental images were formed via sound effects that could not be shown
in films of the time
i. These sound effects preceded today’s graphic visual special
effects
5. Collectively, radio crime-and-justice programming provided the models for:
a. modern-day crime-and-justice reality programming
b. the contemporary stereotypes of criminals and criminal justice
c. the heavy emphasis on law enforcement activities over other segments
of the criminal justice system
d. the exploitation of sensational heinous crimes
E. Visual Media
1. Film
a. Nationalized media content
i. First to provide the media with the ability to blanket all of
society
ii. Content available to every social, economic, and intellectual
stratum
b. Initially silent and inexpensive
i. Did not require a common language
ii. Images were universally available and widely consumed
1. By 1917, the U.S. motion picture industry was
established as the premier commercial entertainment
form in the world
2. By the 1930s two of every three Americans attended a
movie weekly
iii. Film rapidly came to reflect and shape American culture
1. First modern mass media
2. Crossed geographic, economic, and ethnic lines
a. Was both a social event and an information
source
3. First medium to bypass the traditional socializing
agents of church, school, family, and community
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c. Dominant crime-and-justice themes
i. The first media criminals were descendants of Western
outlaws, often portrayed in dime novels
ii. Early film criminals were usually portrayed as urban citizens:
depicted ruthless crooks engaged in corrupt business practices
in the pursuit of wealth (a popular contemporary motif)
iii. Nostalgic portrayals (1910-1920): films portrayed simple
youthful criminality by reflecting street gang experiences
among working-class immigrants
iv. 1920s-1950s criminal motifs included:
1. sullen returning World War I veteran
2. high-rolling bootlegger and Depression-era gunman
(1930s)
3. modern corporate or syndicate executive-gangster
4. depictions of violence, terrorism, and becoming more
graphic as gangsters, policemen, and detectives became
more violent and less distinguishable from one another
(1940s)
2. Television
a. Introduced between 1948 and 1951
i. Soon replaced the radio as the prime home entertainment
medium
ii. The movie industry restructured and radio dramas were history
b. Social Impact
i. Influenced the shape and content of all media and in doing so
helped create a new and different society
ii. Programming has always aimed at attracting and holding large
audiences
1. Has experienced phenomenal growth and acceptance
iii. Programming is often described as a vast wasteland of
recycled, mediocre programs
iv. In 1977: ratio of Americans to television sets was 1:1 (ratio has
never declined)
1. Television viewing remains an important activity for
many Americans
c. Crime shows became a staple of prime time television in the late 1950s
i. Example: The Untouchables
ii. 1959-1961: accounted for one-third of all prime time shows
iii. 1960s: leveling off trend
iv. 1970s: increases in crime programming
v. 1975 (peak): almost 40 percent of the three then dominant
networks’ prime time schedules contained shows focusing on
crime and law enforcement
9
d. Total amount of crime-and-justice programming available via
television is greater than ever with crime stories found within all types
of programming
i. movies shown on television
ii. miniseries
iii. program promotions
iv. syndicated programs
v. local, satellite, and cable network programming
F. New Media
1. Digital interactive media exemplified by:
a. Internet
b. Electronic games
c. Smart phones
2. Competing definitions
a. What comprises “new media”
b. The boundary between where old “legacy media” and the “new media”
is blurry
3. Common characteristics:
a. Made up of devices and capabilities encompassing digital and Internet
technology
b. Characterized by interactive social media and multimedia content
c. Employs digital information that is quickly and easily shared among
large audiences
d. Can take the form of print, sound, moving or still images and all of
their combinations
e. Content is highly fluid and allows for faster and broader
communication between linked consumers and encourages the
merging and looping of content across media forms
4. Information globalization and the social construction of crime have occurred
5. Three characteristics differentiate new media from traditional media:
a. Narrowcasting
i. Key is to target small but loyal audience that shares an interest
in a subject
b. On-demand
i. The delivery of content is controlled and determined to a much
greater degree by the consumer
c. Interactivity
i. Allows the consumer to be an active participant in the
development of the content
ii. Users are often players or surfers and role-playing and content
authorship is a common natural part of new media activities
6. New media moves the audience from passive media customers to active media
co-producers
7. Combined with computers to generate virtual realities
10
a. These new media experiences are the closest to actual experienced
reality available
IV. Types of Content
A. Four Basic Types:
a. One now commonly sees:
i. product placements in films
ii. news stories produced by corporate public relations offices
iii. infomercials disguised as talk and news shows
iv. product endorsements embedded in Facebook pages
5. Has become a pervasive, multi-avenue, continuous media campaign
interwoven into and throughout other media content
6. Sole media realm found to be comparatively low on crime and violence
E. Entertainment
1. Provides escapism
a. Does not reflect any specific reality or real event
b. Popular because it allows consumers a pleasurable escape from reality
i. Narratives engage and transport
ii. Provides views of realities that cannot be otherwise seen
iii. Describes experiences that will not be personally experienced
via mediated events that did not happen
iv. Able to see impossible crimes, fights, and adventures by people
with abilities that no humans possess surviving experiences
that are not survivable
2. Involves all of the media content that is not forwarded as reflecting any
specific reality or real event
a. Crime-and-justice stories have been estimated to account for about
one-fourth of all entertainment output
11
F. News
1. Marketed as true, current, and objective information about significant world
events
a. Plays a strong role in one’s perception of reality
2. Contemporary crime news
a. Voyeuristic consumption
i. Information about real events and real people
1. Events are rare and distant
ii. Displays the lives of people caught up in extreme
circumstances such as:
1. bizarre crimes
2. spectacular trials
3. Extraordinary situations
b. Provides filtered, molded snippets of the abnormal criminal events of
the world
i. Provides an escape from the normal via a social construction of
the unusual
c. Has expanded due to an increased number of media outlets
d. “Social control” news
1. includes information about law enforcement efforts and
new social control policies such as:
a. curfews
b. crackdowns
e. Normally unfolds in three segments:
i. Begins with an announcement that a crime has occurred
ii. The viewer is then visually or verbally transported to the scene
of the crime
iii. Finally, the focus shifts to the search, identification, or
apprehension of the offender and related efforts of law
enforcement officials
3. Historical crime news
a. Popular story lines have included the following:
i. Treason
ii. Murder
iii. Witchcraft
iv. Coverage was laden with details of criminal acts intertwined
with moral exhortations to the readers about the dangers of sin
1. reports are surprisingly similar to today’s infotainment
b. 18th-early 19th century: crime-related street literature maintained the
idea that crime news was for profit and entertainment
c. In the mid 1830s, crime reporting became a prominent specialty
d. The emergence of specialized reporters marks the beginning of the
aggressive marketing of crime news to the public
i. The evolution since has been for news to be produced more
and more as a salable commodity.
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e. By the late 1800s, newspapers came to be produced by modern
corporations with large advertising revenues, staffs, and circulations
f. Crime coverage further increased further with the introduction of
yellow journalism
i. emphasized the details of individual crimes
ii. police officers replaced court personnel and witnesses as the
primary source of crime information
4. Process by which news is created
a. Key for both models is newsworthiness:
i. the criteria by which news producers choose which of all
known events are selected to be news
b. Market model
i. newsworthiness is determined by public interest
ii. journalists simply and objectively report and reproduce the
world in the news
iii. reporters are regarded as reactive news collection agents who
meet public interest needs
c. Manipulative model
i. news is selected according to the interests of the news
agencies’ owners
ii. media purposefully distort reality
1. use the news as a means of shaping public opinion
2. support large social institutions and the status quo
d. Both models are inadequate
i. They ignore the organizational realities of news production,
which by its nature, makes rendering an objective, unbiased,
mirror image of reality impossible
e. Crime news is best understood through the organizational model
i. Factors related to the organizational needs of news agencies
steer the process
ii. Crime news is inherently subjective, though not necessarily
ideologically biased.
iii. What the public receives as news is capsulized, stylized, and
commodified information
5. The bulk of news is formed by journalists working under organizational
pressures
a. Two forms:
i. As organizations, news agencies need to routinize nonroutine
events to plan and schedule the use of resources.
ii. News media personnel must become active co-creators of the
news
1. Reactive to truly unexpected events, proactive and part
of the creation process for the rest of the news
6. Two information-processing systems
a. News agencies
13
b. Government
i. Beat system: reporters cover specific subject areas, such as
state politics or downtown crime
1. restricts a journalist’s sources and perspectives
a. report on those at the top of the social hierarchy
b. report on those who threaten them (those at the
bottom)
c. report to an audience located in the middle of
the social hierarchy
ii. Contemporary traditional journalism has become characterized
by the processing of news releases and press conferences than
1. The focus of contemporary traditional journalism is
now on individual criminals and street crimes
2. Normally hear criminal justice system and government
officials talking criminals and crimes or receive non-
journalistic accounts directly distributed through new
media avenues
a. Contemporary traditional news agencies often
find themselves using unedited images and
accounts produced at a crime scene by new
media equipped bi-standers
i. As likely to see images from a smart
phone on the news as see footage
produced by a news agency crime
reporter
7. Criteria for the selection of crime news
a. A story will be chosen depending on the following:
i. How it fits into established themes
ii. Seriousness of the events
iii. Whimsical circumstances
iv. Sentimental or dramatic elements
v. The involvement of high-status persons
vi. Engaging images
vii. The seriousness of the event--primary factor
1. crimes occur in the opposite proportion to their
seriousness
a. the news criterion for seriousness is harm to
individuals rather than overall social harm
2. the media report those crimes that are least common
and thus construct a crime reality at odds with the social
reality of crime
a. it is therefore difficult for the public to estimate
the typical crime
8. Crime news production checkpoints
a. Gatekeepers (see Figure 1.2)
14
i. The person controlling the processing checkpoints
ii. Crime reporter
1. key gatekeeper
2. must develop reliable police resources and maintain
their trust
a. developed a working relationship with the
police that benefited both and, over time, the
two sides developed similar work experiences
and outlooks
iii. Public information officer (PIO)
1. public agencies and private lobby and pressure groups
have entered the crime news gatekeeping process
a. the PIO has emerged as the criminal justice
system’s response to this competition
2. new media content such as cell phone videos have
allowed private individuals to influence the crime news
gatekeeping process
9. Crime news makes up a large part of the total news because it:
a. is prepackaged and popular
b. helps news organizations in their routinization task
i. scheduling and resource allocation
c. can be gathered at little cost
d. is popular with the public
G. Infotainment
1. Defined as the marketing of edited, highly formatted information about the
world in entertainment media vehicles
a. combines aspects of news, entertainment, and advertising
i. audience feels like they are learning real facts
ii. audience is really getting a highly stylized rendition of a
narrow, edited slice of the world
iii. makes it less sensible to discuss the three traditional media
components separately
iv. crime perfectly fits infotainment demands for content about
real events that can be delivered in an entertaining fashion
1. infotainment has always played a minor role in the
media’s crime-and-justice content
2. Early examples include:
a. Crime pamphlets
b. Gallows sermons
3. Why did infotainment explode in the late twentieth century?
a. Media, led by television, became more visual, intrusive, and
technologically capable
i. Satellites beam information around the world
ii. News helicopters
iii. Videotaped events
15
iv. Surveillance cameras
b. Viewing audience became more voyeuristic and entertainment
conscious
i. News and entertainment has blurred
1. Expanded hours, more networks, and new media
competing for audience attention led to a need for more
content
a. led to entertainment elements being
incorporated into news content
2. Blurring began in the 1980s
3. Contemporary consumers are unable to draw a line
between crime-and-justice news and crime-and-justice
entertainment
4. Today, substantial amounts of infotainment content are found across a broad
spectrum of shows
a. Found in:
i. Television
ii. Print
iii. Radio
b. Examples of shows:
i. celebrity sports
ii. lifestyles
iii. interview
iv. game
v. pseudoscience
vi. crime-and-justice
1. COPS
5. Crime control model dominates in crime-and-justice infotainment
a. “Realism” encourages the acceptance of their portrayals by audiences
as accurate pictures of the world because they employ the following:
i. real crimes
ii. reenactments
iii. documentary-like formatting
b. Employ the oldest entertainment crime story structure known:
i. crime → chase → capture
6. Three types of common crime-and-justice infotainment
a. News magazines and web sites and blogs
i. Extend the application of the entertainment values found in
lesser degrees in much of the daily news content
ii. Stories are underdeveloped
1. Because of their time and format constraints, not much
time is spent on any single story
iii. Devote more content to the most interesting stories
1. the most sensational, violent, dramatic, visual or
scandalous
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iv. Provide audiences:
1. access to large amounts of information
2. opportunities to share opinions about crimes
3. Within these avenues, a crime can be fully constructed
as an entertainment vehicle along stereotypic story
lines, plots, characters, victims, villains, and dramatic
endings
v. Lower end programs are equivalent to tabloids
vi. Higher end shows include 60 minutes and web sites associated
with established news agencies
vii. Convey the impression that crime is being discussed from
multiple sides and that a full contextual review is being
provided
viii. However, we see a process of commodification
1. Defined: the packaging and marketing of crime
information for popular consumption and commercial
profit
2. crimes and criminals are portrayed as simplistic
3. the public’s ability to evaluate criminal justice policies
suffers
b. Reality-based crime shows
i. Entertain by sensationalizing real stories about crime and
justice
ii. Employ dramatizations of actual crimes interspersed with
police narrative and interviews or actual footage
iii. Concerns arise directly from their claim to be presenting reality
iv. Features:
1. They mix reconstructions, actors, and interviews and
employ camera angles, music, lighting, and sets to
enhance their dramatic and entertainment elements
2. Law and order, social control, and the point of view of
law enforcement officials dominate
3. Stereotyped portraits of crimes, criminals, and victims
4. The crime-and-justice world appears as a violent,
crime-prone underclass held in check by the police
c. Media trials: the co-optation of a regional or national crime or justice
event by the media which are developed and marketed along
entertainment style storylines as a source of drama, entertainment, and
profit
i. A dramatic miniseries developed around a real criminal case
ii. Society is intrigued by the inner workings of the criminal
justice system
iii. Classic example includes the film To Kill a Mockingbird which
gave audience’s a realistic view
iv. Cameras allowed in America’s courtrooms (late 1970s) to:
17
1. cover deliberations
2. record the emotional responses of the participants
3. conduct interviews with participants
v. Differ from typical news coverage due to the massive and
intense coverage that begins either with the discovery of the
crime or the arrest of the accused
1. The media cover all aspects of a case, often
highlighting extralegal aspects
2. Judges, lawyers, police, witnesses, jurors, and
defendants are interviewed, photographed, and
frequently raised to celebrity status
3. Personalities, personal relationships, physical
appearances, and idiosyncrasies are commented on
regardless of legal relevance
4. Coverage is live whenever possible, pictures are
preferred over text, and text is characterized by
conjecture and sensationalism
vi. “Trials of the century” occur with regularity
1. Early example: 1893: Lizzie Borden ax murder trial
2. Other once-famous names include:
a. Fatty Arbuckle
b. Sacco and Vanzetti
c. Bruno Hauptmann
d. the Rosenbergs
e. Patty Hearst
f. Scott Peterson
g. Drew Peterson
3. Soon to follow examples of once-famous names:
a. Casey Anthony
b. Jodi Arias (see Box 1.2)
vii. These trials become the palettes for the social construction of
the criminal justice system
1. They provide simplistic explanations of crime within a
“real” trial
2. Crime is nearly universally attributed to individual
characteristics and failings (rather than to social
conditions)
viii. Represent the complete merging of information and
entertainment
V. Crime and Justice as a Mediated Experience
1. Mediated Experience: the comparative experience that an individual has when he or she
experiences an event via the media versus actually personally experiencing the event
a. Evolution of the Mediated Experience
i. Radio provided sound, live coverage, and home delivery
18
ii. Films provided continuous action
iii. Television provided a combination of image, sound, live coverage, and
home delivery
iv. New media technological developments have evolved to create delivery
vehicles that increase access and choice in media consumption
v. Electronic interactive games and computer-generated images have moved
the mediated experience via virtual and augmented reality to be physically
competitive to a real-world experience while simultaneously shifting the
audience from passive observers of events to digital participants
b. The evolution of the media has had a significant impact on the criminal justice
system
i. Mediated crime-and-justice experience and knowledge dominates real-
world crime-and-justice experience and knowledge
1. Most Americans have limited direct experience with crime and the
criminal justice system despite reports to the contrary
2. Experiencing crime and justice via the media is preferable to
experiencing crime-and-justice events directly
c. Crime-and-justice policies are created from mediated reality
i. We live in a multimedia environment where content, particularly images,
appear ubiquitously throughout the media landscape
ii. In some instances the mediated event blots out the actual event so that
what people believe happened based on widespread media renditions
supplants what actually happened.
1. The facts of an event become irrelevant in the face of the mediated
rendition of the event.
2. This trend toward media portrayal over reality is particularly
powerful in crime and justice where news, entertainment, and
advertising combine with infotainment content and new media to
construct our mediated crime-and-justice reality
3. What we believe about crime and justice and what we think ought
to be done about crime and justice is based on a view of reality that
has been parsed, filtered, recast, and refiltered through the
electronic, visually dominated, multimedia web
d. Mediated crime-and-justice experiences become more socially significant and
influential then actual experiences.
2. In sum, five realities of twenty-first-century media are important for crime and justice
a. Mass media is an electronic, visually dominated media
i. Content is fluid and moves quickly from medium to medium
ii. Images have more value than other media content
iii. Multimedia renditions of events are the norm
iv. Goal is to make the mediated experience indistinguishable from actual
experience
v. New media is altering the manner in which crime-and-justice information
is collected, disseminated, and interpreted
b. The current marketing structure of the media is narrowcasting
19
i. Content is constantly reformatted, reused, and looped to reach multiple
and varied markets
ii. New media have decentralized the creation and distribution of content
iii. Audiences have moved from passive consumers to active participants
c. Media must be understood as a collection of for-profit businesses
i. From a media business perspective, advertising is the most important
content
1. Each media business must make money to survive, and the primary
purpose of media is to deliver a consumer to an advertiser
ii. From a media business perspective, advertising is the most important
content
iii. From the consumer and social impact side, the most important content is
infotainment
iv. New media has begun to drastically change the profitability of legacy
media, especially print-based ones
d. Media businesses exist within a highly competitive environment
20
Chapter Key Terms
memorial criminal justice policies [2]
looping [5]
multimedia web [9]
yellow journalism [17]
newsworthiness [17]
market model [17]
manipulative model [17]
organizational model [17]
gatekeeper [18]
infotainment [19]
commodification [22]
media trial [23]
mediated experience [25]
Helpful and Interesting Internet Sites
The following sites are interesting sources for this chapter. Please review them before
recommending them to your students.
Memorial Criminal Justice Policy Links & Crime Information Links
http://www.amberalert.gov/
http://www.klaaskids.org/index.htm
http://www.meganslaw.ca.gov/
http://www.wetip.com/
Media History and Media Links
http://www.tvhistory.tv/
http://dmoz.org/News/Media/
http://www.criminology.fsu.edu/crimemedia/medialinks.htm
http://www.fcc.gov/
http://www.otr.com/private.shtml
Legislative Policy
http://thomas.loc.gov/
http://www.threestrikes.org/index.html
