Running head: IS THE NATURE OF CRIME ACCURATELY PRESENTED

Is The Nature Of Crime In Our Society Accurately Presented By The Media? Jeffory Wattson Griffith University School of Criminology and Criminal Justice

IS THE NATURE OF CRIME ACCURATELY PRESENTED Abstract

As a multicultural population Australia has emerged as a society standing at the cross roads of cultural definition. Neighbor to Asia, we as a relatively new society are a developing diversity in cosmopolitan views constantly forming and modifying preferences about religion, marketplace commerce, gender equality and the environment. Statistically, as social parameters here evolved and became more complex, so did media representation, hyper realitising society, eschewing experts measuring social crime a necessity to construct a standardized fluency, in the way a nation identifies and formats its factual data. With the proliferation in technology media acquired instant access to the digital information age thus corporealzing a constructional ability to do more than simply report the news. This paper discusses accuracy in media representation on the state of crime as a social phenomenon, when evaluated procedurally against underlying economic fundamentals.

IS THE NATURE OF CRIME ACCURATELY PRESENTED Is The Nature Of Crime In Our Society Accurately Presented By The Media?

A Newspaper headline reads,

"Derryn Hinch officially charged for naming sex fiends" "Officers arrived at his city apartment building about 8.30am today and served the Expected Charges. (Herald Sun 22nd September 2011, Anderson, P).

What we experience through media representation as a functioning social model conveys certain impressions about the world of the society within which we live and the way crime as a constant forms a sociological construct around us. Media tells us that most crime is neither normal nor tolerated in the community and as a result of that state of abnormality individuals caught up involved in crime are themselves by virtue of news report open to public shame and in some cases ridicule for their wrong doing. A position paper prepared for the Australian Psychological Society, explores some multifaceted aspects of agenda setting within the organizational structure of mass media. It cites the following premise, media representations are not simply a mirror of society but rather they are highly selective and constructed portrayals. (Sanson et al 2000, p. 9)

IS THE NATURE OF CRIME ACCURATELY PRESENTED

At a glance this statement in itself might appear not to be telling us anything new on what we already know about the media as a product. Yet if we look more closely, at words like construct and selectivity we uncover an insight into a dimension of what we have come to understand as a powerful medium which generates, disseminates and communicates information in volumetric proportion. Sparks in his review identifies mass media as constantly monitoring individuals and institutional processes looking for systemic weakness. The representation of order thus inherently involves moral evaluation, views of the Propriety of particular actions and a hierarchical sense of place, position and quality. For the authors, the making and exchange of symbols (such as news products) is an intrinsic part of the construction and reproduction of social order. (Sparks, 1991, P.176) In looking to actual dramatized representation of crime to see what the media portrays as a responsible society, it is then that we glimpse a complex picture of the actual state of social criminality as represented through filtered media values. Sparks tells us that the authors Ericson et al.s: Representing Order: Crime, Law and Justice in the News Media; illustrates the sociology of journalism as being inherently prone to weakness. Media is characterized as multifaceted and exists within a state of social flux where there are no absolutes or singular belief. Instead media exhibits a kaleidoscopic posture given societies, trends, swings and movements at any particular time. Scherzler writes, There are in-depth radio programs and there are quick news bulletins. There are trustworthy journalists, but there are also those that will do anything to sell their papers. (Scherzler, 2007, p.186)

IS THE NATURE OF CRIME ACCURATELY PRESENTED The communication business of media articulates a language unique to its own profession. It expresses a vocabulary. It has its own jargon, clich, motto and slang. It uses tools like discrimination, bias, persuasion and fear all of which can be systemically applied given the circumstance to draw its own conclusion.

One minute media can be purging society of pedophiles even once they have been released back into the community from serving a prison sentence... and in the next, media galvanizes feminist perspectives to identify and weed out attitudes which conceal industrial workplace molestation. During times where employment is scarce, media focus on crime show distinctive differences in the way a community addresses law and order compared with how these issues are dealt with during periods of relative fiscal stability. Themes like community safety, financial security, police performance and the political agenda are intrinsically coupled in times of fiscal uncertainty with values which may traverse social controversy. This being where perceptions and beliefs about crime at such times are disproportionately magnified against unfolding pressures relating to periods of economic recession. The one binding element that drives this social concurrence spurring on public emotion over the nature of crime as a general issue is - insecurity, which conclusively is linked in the longer term to the state of the economy. Weatherburn looks at economic related criminality, If the short-term effects of economic adversity on crime remain obscure to us, the existing research evidence allows us to assume that any significant increase in relative economic deprivation will, over the longer term, bring about increases in the supply of offenders in the community (Weatherburn 40,p.8)

IS THE NATURE OF CRIME ACCURATELY PRESENTED

Yet in good economic conditions TV media can portray illegal activity with a sense of pseudo admissibility, flaunting western cultural values. News stories on one hand may feature police seizure of narcotics on the 6 oclock news showing a captured cache of opiates displayed under lights for all to see and yet on the other portray the use of drug theme in movies as fashionable and socially acceptable for young people to do. (Pedersen et al,) then examine subcultural music and the phenomenon of house parties as contributors to early stage adult crime. (p.1695) As Indonesia arrests a fourteen year old boy for possession of a small amount of marijuana, its perhaps difficult for Asian communities to equate practices here which see police walking past doorways that lead from open streets into legally approved injecting rooms. The propensity for society to at least expose certain types of crime to public debate is an indicative sign of a communitys willingness to be involved in the process of consensus on issues it sees as important to the social order. Dupont examines reform within the police force. Over the past twenty years, Australian police services have been exposed to the scrutiny of royal commissions, which have uncovered a disturbing pattern of corruption and inefficiency. The media have also introduced the public to the most unpalatable aspects of police culture. (Dupont, 2003, p.16) Yet areas where policing are not thoroughly recognized he writes, Another limitation of this model is that the statistics are only made up of recorded incidents, while police work relies heavily on the discretionary power of constables to resolve situations informally or to negotiate out-of-court settlements between parties.

IS THE NATURE OF CRIME ACCURATELY PRESENTED Measuring the performance of the police without considering the impact of these 'hidden' activities reduces police work to a set of administrative activities easily accounted for. (Dupont, 2003, p.21) Can the use of police discretionary powers to expedite resolve such as in domestic disputes find accountable justification? Could an undercover detective expedite matters outside established procedure if in doing so he were to risk illegally implicating himself inadvertently as a participant to criminal drug importation? Or would government funding of a new prison within the states infrastructure have hypothetically any measurable effect on how the media represents and selects its programing priorities? (Pfeiffer et al, 2005) wrote: Crime is not just a staple of general news reporting, but . . . also a conscious choice of subject for the purpose of competing with other media (p.266) Intellectually media subscribe to a cluster of philosophies and ideological positions when embracing interpretation relating to citizenship in a world of changing political and economic landscapes. Media use of criminal label often without redemption against citizens, who it sees as past transgressors, advocate inequity which ostracizes them as individuals from social participation,

individual pursuit, community productivity and economic reward on the basis of criminal record. Veno et al explain, Such labeling allows the dominant group to act punitively and with impunity towards the less powerful group. The social discourse promotes the moral claim that the dominant group is

IS THE NATURE OF CRIME ACCURATELY PRESENTED good by comparison to the bad less powerful group. (Veno et al 2007, p.490) Criminologists consider the use of media selectivity and subjectivity to be linked to states of morale panic i.e.: fallacious perception about the state of crime within society. The following journal extract exemplifies typical instance of a trigger statement which can be isolated as an emotive contributor to social spheres of moral panic. A state premier unambiguously stated his intention to rid the state from the menace of criminal motorcycle gangs, who he claimed were an organized criminal network, (Veno et al, 2007,p.493)

Whilst we should concede that public confidence in law and order is our first priority, police and media often discriminate and misrepresent the nature of crime through minoritizing individuals who have a past criminal record. Citizens who may have been convicted as criminals at one stage in their life are often tarred as free citizens with the same brush as active criminals who remain within a state of offending. Without any provision for statutory limitation criminal label continues indefinitely and will remain with them for the rest of their lives barring citizens from exercising their full rights as participants and contributors to the social good. These anomalies of social injustice continue without constitutional reform beckoning the question. . What sort of money is behind this and what manner of Australian unofficially keeps dossiers on ex-cons? If there is profiteering behind the scenes how then can the nature of crime in society ever be truly understood? Despite this, there are laws which assure Australians of their equal statutory rights.

IS THE NATURE OF CRIME ACCURATELY PRESENTED Yet this does not abate the use of people with prior records from being used to bolster media advertising goals, marketplace commercialism, real estate sale values to anecdotal political repertoire. Is it then of any wonder that moral panic remains a permanent factor that experts in criminal phenomena need to take account of when conducting survey into the state of crime? Pfieffer, Windzio and Kleimann in their article on research into the medias use of sensationalism and impact, access what public audiences expect from the media experience

they write, For the consumer, news is there to provide not only information but also excitement and entertainment (p.266) In closing, how is convention established which sees society in a media based environment lobby to repeal old law so to make way for evolving new definitions and customs without having to resort to discrimination or actions which contravene such existing laws in society as we know it?

IS THE NATURE OF CRIME ACCURATELY PRESENTED Discussion Media is moving toward comprehensive synthesization of entertainment within our dynamic experience of the world. Innovation in entertainment and public information evoke marketplace strategies in the structuralisation of mass media as we know it. Though it is difficult to make an ethical evaluation as to what the nature of crime state is within society in any definitive sense. It is obvious that factors such as legal liability or court disclosure of journalistic sources play a significant role in preventing media from reporting all the news?

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Freedom of the press as a two way street should provide the profession with an ability to regulate its own conduct. Yet can these freedoms be relied upon sufficiently to ensure objective impartiality is adhered to when media as a powerful organisation is defining the nature of the social state? I have written this essay whilst maintaining an opinion that mass media in the first instance is a primary instigator of social agitation who industrially trespasses frequently upon the rights of citizens. Media also manipulates the news as an instigative agent of social change. In concluding this essay I wish to say I have not examined in terms of review relevant perspectives which analyze the effects of crime in a singular sense where there are victims of crime and states of victimization.

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References

Anderson, P. (2011, September 22). Derryn Hinch officially charged for naming sex fiends. Herald Sun. Retrieved from http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria/hinch-charged-fornaming-sex-fiends/story-e6frf7kx-1111117675375 Apps, L. (1990). Media ethics in Australia. Journal of Mass Media Ethics, 5(2), 117-135. Banks, M. (2005). Spaces of (in)security: Media and fear of crime in a local context. Crime Media Culture, 1, 169. Baron, S., & Hartnagel, T. (1997). Attributions, affect, and crime: Street youths' reactions to unemployment. Criminology, 35(3), 409-434. Chesterman, M. (1995). The money or the truth: Defamation reform in Australia and the USA. University New South Wales Law Journal , 18(2), 300-323. Creed, T. (2008). Negligent hiring and criminal rehabilitation: employing ex convicts, yet Avoiding Liability. St.Thomas Law Review, , . Dupont, B. (2003). The new face of police governance in Australia [Abstract]. Journal of Australian Studies, (78), 15. Feilzer, M. (2007). Criminologists making news? Providing factual information on crime and criminal justice through a weekly newspaper column [Abstract]. Crime Media Culture, 3, 285. Ferrell, J. (1999). Cultural criminology. Annual Review of Sociology Y, 29(1), 395-418. Lin, Hui-Cho (2002). Theories of organizational &social systems. Futurics, 26(1/2), 1.

IS THE NATURE OF CRIME ACCURATELY PRESENTED Lozusic, R. (2003, January). Gangs in NSW. NSW Parliamentary Library Research Service: Briefing Paper No16/02

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http://parliament.nsw.gov.au/prod/parlment/publications.nsf/0/A2BB6389AAD0ECF1CA256EC F00097F59/$File/16-02.pdf, 1-44. Naylor, B. (2011). Criminal Records and Rehabilitation in Australia. European Journal of Probation, 3(1), 79-96. Orr, G. (2010). Academics and the media in Australia. Austrtalian Universities Review, 52(1), 23-31. Pedersen, W. Skrondal, A. (1999). Ecstasy and new pattens of drug use: A normal population study. Addiction (Abingdon England), 94(11), 1695. Pfieffer, C., Windzio, M., & Kleimann, M. (2005). Media use and its impacts on crime perception, sentencing attitudes and crime policy. European Journal of Criminology, 2, 259-285. Sanson, A., Duck, J., Ungerer, J., Scuderi, C., & Sutton, J. (2000). Media Presentations & Responsibilities,Psyscological Perspectives. Australian Psychological position paper of the Directorate of Social Issues,, . Scherzler, D. (2007). Journalists and Archaeologists:Notes on dealing constructively with the mass media. European Journal of Archaeology, 10,(2-3), 185-206. Sparks, R. (1993). Representing Order:Crime Law & Justice in the News Media. The Howard Journal of Criminal Justice, 32(2), 176. Veno, A., & Van Den Eynde, J. (2007). Moral panic neutralization project: A media - based intervention. Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology, 17(6), 490.

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Weatherburn, D. (n.d.). Economic Adversity and Crime. Trends & Issues in Crime and Criminal Justice, (40),.

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