Constructing Crime

GARY W. POTTER AND VICTOR E. KAPPELER

Potter and Kappeler argue that consumers of media develop an inaccurate picture of crime in the United States. Most Americans will never be victims of a crime, yet they fear they are in imminent danger of being victimized. According to Potter and Kappeler, media representations of crime focus on violent stranger crime and rare types of crimes (e.g., those were wealthy white women are victims). Potter and Kappeler demonstrate how media portrayals of crime flame racial tensions through selective coverage and that media consumption may actually contribute to decreased accuracy in knowledge about crime, deflecting our attention from serious crime issues in our culture.
There is probably no issue that invokes greater emotion and more consistently influences public opinion than crime. Whether the issue is drug- related crime, violent crime, juvenile crime, child abductions, serial killers, youth gangs, or crime against the elderly, a public consensus exists that crime is rampant, dangerous, and threatening to explode. The dangers of crime are seen as immediate, omnipresent, and almost inescapable. For more than three decades in the United States, the fear of crime has been so real that one can almost reach out and touch it. Politicians, law enforcement executives, the private crime industry, and the media cater to the public mood. Their increasingly draconian responses-in the form of more police, more arrests, longer sentences, more prisons, and more executions-affirm public fears, and that fear grows unabated. Each new crime story, each new crime movie, each new governmental pronouncement on crime increases the public thirst for more crime control, less personal freedom, and greater intervention by the state.
In contrast to seemingly tangible public fear, crime facts are far more difficult to assess. The emotional reaction to crime makes the public policy issue of control intensely sensitive. The issue responds to manipulation and pandering so predictably that advertisers and public relations experts would be envious of the responses elicited. Why are crime facts so difficult to determine but crime fear so easy to manipulate? Through what process do rumors, gossip, urban legends, and apocryphal stories become public “common sense”? Through what mechanisms do isolated and rare incidents weave a tapestry of fear, panic, and hysteria? More importantly, who benefits from the construction of this labyrinth ...? ... A careful look at crime and crime-related issues can help us see beyond the web of public fear. Public opinion and crime facts demonstrate no congruence. The reality of crime in the United States has been blanketed by a constructed reality. The policies and programs emanating from that constructed reality do far more damage than good to public safety and crime control.

Crime Knowledge

What does the public really know about crime and how do they know it? The most reliable crime data available clearly demonstrate that the vast majority of people living in the United States will never be victims of crime. In fact, over 90 percent of the U.S. population has no direct experience with crime at all (Kappeler & Potter, 2005). Yet the public remains convinced of imminent danger-changing their personal habits and lives to accommodate fears and voting for politicians who promise solutions to the conjured problem. What is the basis for these opinions, fears, and impressions?
In addition to their own experiences, people interpret and internalize the experiences of others. They hear-often second-, third-, or fourth-hand-about crime incidents involving neighbors, relatives, friends, and friends of friends. This process of socialization carries crime "facts” and crime-related experiences from one person to many others like a virus. Crime is a topic of conversation, both public and private. Strong opinions and reactions amplify and extend the content of actual experiences. Lost in the retelling is the relatively isolated aspect of the incidents. ...
For centuries, the only means of disseminating knowledge from one person to another was oral communication. Reaching larger audiences was a slow, repetitive process limited by time and place. The printing press and public education were important revolutions that allowed written messages from one person to reach many readers. Newer technologies today have created maelstrom of information. The mass media can disseminate messages literally with the speed of light and sound. Publishers produce thousands of books about crime-some fictional, some true, some simply crude “pot-boilers.” Movies make crime a central theme. Producers know that movies like The Clearing, Kill Bill, Memento, Pulp Fiction, Natural Born Killers, and The Usual Suspects attract large audiences. Television programs also use crime and violence to attract attention. Police programs have been a staple of television programming from Dragnet to CSI. The creator of the Law & Order series, Dick Wolf, comments:
Crime is a constantly renewable resource. Everyday people continue to kill each other in bizarre and unfathomable ways. Even if murder goes down by double digits, there are still thousands of people killed in this country every year and killers who warrant prosecution. (Smith, 2006, p. 16)
Because of the public's fixation on crime, the television industry constructed a new type of programming in 1989-a hybrid between entertainment and crime news called reality TV. By the end of 1993, there were seven national programs fitting this profile. Two survived until the mid 2010s ... and continued to attract viewers: America's Most Wanted and Unsolved Mysteries. In 2006 the web site for America's Most Wanted advertised its hotline (1-800-CRIMETV) for tips from viewers and proclaimed, "You have helped catch 876 fugitives to date." There is also an AMW case tracker that tells viewers there are 1,185 open cases. You ... could select the type of crime from a drop-down list, including terrorism, or you can click on an area on the map of the United States and look at crimes by region. Other features of the web site included: "In the Line of Duty," which claims more than 1,600 law enforcement officers-"an average of one death every 53 hours'-died on the job during the past 10 years and an advertisement for a "fun safety DVD for kids” (AMW, 2006). In 2006 the portal to the web site for Unsolved Mysteries flashed “missing,” “lost love," "homicide," and "fugitive” before showing the title of the program and a button to click to enter the site, where the viewer is told this is one of television's first interactive series (Unsolved, 2006).
According to research, the mass media are the basic sources of information on crime, criminals, crime control policies, and the criminal justice system for most people (Barak, 1994; Ericson, Baranek, & Chan, 1989; Graber, 1980; Warr, 1995). Crime themes are a mother lode for the media; crime attracts viewers. More viewers mean greater newspaper and magazine circulations, larger television audiences, and consequently larger advertising fees (Barkan, 1997). The local news and reality crime shows focus on dramatic themes to attract viewers: police “hot pursuits”; violent crimes (particularly strange and heinous crimes with innocent and unsuspecting victims); and crime alleged to be committed by social deviants like drug addicts, pedophiles, prostitutes, and terrorists.

The Portrayal of Crime in the Mass Media

Crime rates have decreased every year since 1991, and victimization surveys indicate that serious crime has been on a perpetual decline since the early 1970s (Kappeler & Potter, 2005). The media, however, provide a distorted view of how much crime there is in society. The media create a wholly inaccurate image of a society in which violent crime is rampant and in which crime is constantly and immutably on the increase. In addition, media coverage of crime seriously distorts public perception of the types of crime being committed and the frequency with which violent crimes occur. The media have a preoccupation with violent crime. Researchers have demonstrated a consistent and strong bias in the news toward murder, sexual crimes, gangs and violence, and drug-related violence (Beirne & Messerschmidt, 1995; Livingston, 1996).
One study looked at local television news programs in 13 major cities and found that crime far outdistanced all other topics in local newscasts, even weather and sports. Commercial advertisements and crime stories dominated the average 30-minute newscast in the study. Crime made up 20 percent of all local TV stories, followed by weather at 11 percent and accidents and disasters at 9 percent (Public Health Reports, 1998). The media not only overreport crime, but they also focus on the least common crimes, crimes of violence (Lundman, 2003). Another focus is random violence committed by strangers, despite the fact that violence overwhelmingly occurs among friends and intimates (Feld, 2003).
The less common a crime is, the more coverage it will generate. For example, crimes against small children and wealthy white women are featured in most crime reporting despite the fact that these groups have the lowest victimization rates of any social groups in the United States (Feld, 2003). Sensational and rare crimes that dovetail conveniently into news themes with moralistic messages are particularly popular. Over the years the media have created crime scares by formulating news themes around issues of "white-slavery” in the prostitution industry; sexual psychopaths running rampant in major cities; satanists engaged in mass murder, child sacrifice, and ritualistic child abuse; serial killers roaming the countryside; and many others. As Philip Jenkins (1996) comments:
If we relied solely on the evidence of the mass media, we might well believe that every few years, a particular form of immoral or criminal behavior becomes so dangerous as almost to threaten the foundations of society. ... These panics are important in their own right for what they reveal about social concerns and prejudices-often based on xenophobia and anti-immigrant prejudice. (pp. 67-70)
Mass murders by satanic cults, the predators of roaming serial killers, and organized child abuse in day-care centers are so rare as to be total aberrations. The media choose to ignore common, everyday, typical crime. White-collar crimes such as price-fixing, illegal disposal of toxic waste, and unsafe work conditions get little coverage, so the public tends not to view these activities as “real crime.”
Crime reports in the media inflame racial tensions and fears through biased and selective coverage. Crime stories on television news programs and in newspapers focus on crimes by African-American and Hispanic offenders, creating a wildly exaggerated view of their involvement in street crime and violent crime (Dorfman & Schiraldi, 2001; Lundman, 2003). The media also distort the race of victims in three important ways. First, newspapers carry a vastly inflated number of stories about white victims when compared to NCVS (National Crime Victimization Survey) statistics on victimization. Second, stories featuring white victims are longer and more detailed than stories about African-American victims. Finally, despite the fact that violent crime is overwhelmingly intraracial, newspapers focus on stories involving white victims and African-American offenders (Lundman, 2003).
When a story deals with an African- American or Hispanic offender, the focus is usually on interracial crime as evidenced by accompanying photographs of the offender being taken into police custody or a mugshot of the offender (Chiricos & Eschholz, 2002; Feld, 2003). The impact of this racial profiling by the media is stunning. One study found that 60 percent of the people interviewed recalled an offender being shown in a television news story about crime when no offender images were included. Of those who saw the phantom offender, 70 percent were certain the offender was African American (Gilliam & Iyengar, 2000).
The media are also guilty of bias by age in the depiction of crime and violent crime. Both television and newspaper coverage of crime portrays young people as offenders in violent incidents (Dorfman & Schiraldi, 2001). In fact, the research shows that 68 percent of all television news stories on violent crime highlight youthful offenders, and 55 percent of all stories about young people highlight violence. The reality is that less than 4 percent of all arrests of youths are for violent crime, and less than 16 percent of all crime is committed by young people (FBI, 2005).
The many distortions about crime, types of crime, race, and demographics found in media reporting help explain public ignorance about crime, the criminal justice system, and crime control policy in the United States (Cullen, Fisher, & Applegate, 2000). A study of 500 students taking introductory criminal justice classes found that they estimated the annual number of homicides in the United States at about 250,000 (Vandiver & Giacopassi, 1997, p. 141). In 1997, there were slightly more than 18,208 murders; in 2004 there were 16,137. Similarly a Gallup Poll in 2002 found that 62 percent of the U.S. public thought crime was higher than in 2001, despite a steady ten year drop in crime rates (Maguire & Pastore, 2004).

Media Attention and Citizen Fear of Crime

With such heavy exposure to crime themes in both news and entertainment programming, it would appear to be common sense that more media exposure should be directly related to a greater fear of crime. However, unlike media analysts and news anchors, social scientists are constrained by their craft to be more circumspect in their claims. A correlation between media exposure and concerns about crime is easy to demonstrate, but correlation is a long way from causation. Direct relationships are not easy to prove. For example, it is difficult to demonstrate whether greater media exposure causes fear of crime or whether fear of crime causes greater media exposure because people are staying home watching crime on television. As we pointed out earlier, people are exposed to information other than that provided by the media that may influence their viewpoints (i.e., rumors, gossip, urban legends). In addition, media research is difficult, complex, and subject to many pitfalls. For example, how does one measure the impact of the media? Is viewing time a measure? Do column inches constitute an index? Does the quality and the impact of language and content take precedence? (Miethe & Lee, 1984; Skogan & Maxfield, 1981; Surette, 1998).
Despite the need for caution and the constraints of science, much evidence indicates that the media do influence the level of fear of crime and contribute to the persistence of crime as a major national issue. George Gerbner, a leading media researcher at the Annenberg School of Communications at the University of Pennsylvania, developed cultivation theory-the “mean world” syndrome—to describe the impact of the media. Gerbner argues that research demonstrates that heavy viewers of television violence, whether in entertainment or news mediums, increasingly develop the feeling that they are living in a state of siege. Gerbner's research shows that heavy television viewers: (1) seriously overestimate the probability that they will be victims of violence; (2) believe their own neighborhoods to be unsafe; (3) rank fear of crime as one of their most compelling personal problems; (4) assume crime rates are going up regardless of whether they really are; (5) support punitive anti-crime measures; and (6) are more likely to buy guns and anti-crime safety devices (Gerbner, 1994). Other research demonstrates that “heavy viewers ... exhibit an exaggerated fear of victimization and a perception that people cannot be trusted” (Carlson, 1995, p. 190).
It is difficult to gauge the impact of the media on fear of crime. One thing, however, is clear from the research: the more you watch television news, the more fearful you are of crime. People who watch more television news and more television crime dramas express dramatically higher rates of fear about crime than those who watch fewer broadcasts (Eschholz, Chiricos, & Gertz, 2003). A study in Philadelphia found that people who watched the television news four times a week were 40 percent more likely to be very worried about crime than those who did not watch the news (Bunch, 1999).
In addition to increasing public fear, media crime coverage has other effects on public perceptions and views of crime. Heavy coverage shapes perceptions and directs much public discourse on the crime issue. For example, the media regularly and falsely direct attention to crimes allegedly committed by young, poor, urban males, who are often members of minority groups (Reiman, 2004). Media coverage directs people's attention to specific crimes and helps to shape those crimes as social problems (i.e., drug use, gangs). Media coverage limits discourse on crime control options to present policies--suggesting that the only options are more laws, more police, longer sentences, and more prisons (Kappeler & Potter, 2005). The impact of media coverage is readily apparent in the creation of crime scares and moral panics.

Moral Panics

The concept of a moral panic was developed by Stanley Cohen (1980). A moral panic occurs when a group or type of activity is perceived as a threat to the stability and well-being of society. The media provide copious details and information (not necessarily accurate); this is followed by attention from law enforcement officials, politicians, and editorial writers who begin to comment on the panic. “Experts" then join the fray and try to explain the panic and offer policy options for dealing with it.
Moral panics direct public attention toward the activity or group and organize public fear for the well-being of society. The attention amplifies the behavior of the groups under scrutiny....
... In 1922, future Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter and legal scholar Roscoe Pound took the media to task for creating crime scares. Frankfurter and Pound noted that newspapers in Cleveland had dramatically increased their coverage of crime stories during 1919, even though crimes reported to the police had increased only slightly. They charged that the press was needlessly alarming the public and that the effect was a dangerous tendency for the public to pressure police to ignore due process rights and constitutional protections in their pursuit of criminals (Frankfurter & Pound, 1922). The "sex fiend” panic of the 1930s and 1940s resulted in the passage of sexual psychopath laws in 28 states. One analysis of the development of these laws reveals a key role played by the media (McCaghy & Capron, 1997). Sex fiend panics typically began with the commission of a sex crime, particularly a crime against a child, accompanied by heavy mass media coverage. This panic included estimates, without any basis in fact, that thousands of sex fiends were at large in the community. These “sex crime waves" were not related to any increase in the actual numbers of reported sex crimes; the panic was artificially induced by media coverage of particularly sala- cious cases (see Sutherland, 1950). The media advocated such solutions as castration, the outlawing of pornography, and life imprisonment for sex offenders. Special sexual psychopath laws were passed that allowed indeterminate confinement for any offender, whether a child molester or an exhibitionist or a fornicator, until the state deemed them to be cured. In some states, the original offense didn't even have to be a sex offense-it could be robbery or arson, as long as a psychiatrist could identify sexual dysfunctions in the accused....
In the 1980s the same kind of moral panic surfaced with regard to the use of crack (a smokable form of cocaine hydrochloride). Craig Reinarman and Harry Levine (1989) carefully researched the media's creation of a drug scare surrounding crack. Reinarman and Levine define a "drug scare" as a historical period in which all manner of social difficulties (such as crime, health problems, the failure of the education system) are blamed on a chemical substance. “Drug scares” are not new. Problems of opiate addiction at the turn of the century were blamed on Chinese immigrants; African Americans were portrayed as "cocaine fiends” during the 1920s; violent behavior resulting from marijuana consumption was linked to Mexican farm laborers in the 1920s and 1930s. The construction of the crack scare was similar in that it linked the use of crack-cocaine to inner-city blacks, Hispanics, and youths. In the 1970s, when the use of expensive cocaine hydrochlo. ride was concentrated among affluent white both the media and the state focused on heroin seen as a drug of the inner-city poor. Only when cocaine became available in an inexpensive form, crack, did the scapegoating common to drug scares begin.
The media hype began in 1986, following the spread of crack into poor and working class neighborhoods. Time and Newsweek ran five cover stories each on crack during 1986. The three major television networks quickly joined the feeding frenzy. NBC did 400 news stories on crack between June and December 1986; in July 1986, all three networks ran 74 drug stories on their nightly newscasts. These stories contained highly inflated estimates of crack use and warnings about the dangers of the drug.
Those news stories were particularly troubling precisely because they were entirely incorrect. Research from the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA) showed that the use of all forms of cocaine by youth and young adults had reached its peak four years earlier and had been declining ever since. Every indicator showed that at the height of the media frenzy crack use was relatively rare (Walker, 1998). Surveys of high school students demonstrated that experimentation with cocaine and cocaine products had been decreasing steadily since 1980. In fact, the government's own statistics showed that 96 percent of young people in the United States had never even tried crack. If there had been an epidemic, it was long over.
Officially produced data strongly refuted other claims about crack use. The media reports claimed that crack and cocaine were highly addictive and that crack, in particular, was so addictive that one experience with the drug could addict a user for life. However, NIDA estimates showed that of the 22 million people who had used cocaine and cocaine-products, very few of them ever became addicted. In fact, very few of them ever escalated to daily use. NIDA's own estimates indicated that fewer than 3 percent of cocaine users would ever become "problem" users (Kappeler & Potter, 2005). The health dangers of caine and crack were also widely exaggerated; few users ever required medical treatment because of using the drug.
The impact of the crack scare was tangible and immediate. New laws were passed increasing mandatory sentences for crack use and sales. Ironically, these laws resulted in a situation where someone arrested for crack faced the prospect of a prison sentence three to eight times longer than a sentence for cocaine hydrochloride, the substance needed to produce crack. The drug laws for crack inverted the typical ratio- wholesalers receive less severe sanctions than retailers and users. …

Crime Mythology

False beliefs about crime abound in U.S. society and play a disproportionate role in the formulation of government and law enforcement policies. The crime that does exist is not predominantly violent, and violent crime is not as common or debilitating as the media would lead us to believe. The media, the state, and criminal justice officials create and perpetuate crime myths.
Crime myths focus on unpopular, minority, and deviant groups in society. Drug problems have consistently been laid squarely at the feet of immigrant groups, minority groups, and inner- city residents, wholly displacing the reality of drug use. Problems of opiate addiction in the late 1800s and early 1900s were blamed on migrant Chinese workers, while the actual problem resulted from the overuse of over-the-counter elixirs by white, middle-aged, rural, Protestant women. The reputed cocaine epidemic of the 1980s was blamed on the irresponsible and hedonistic lifestyles of inner-city minorities, while the facts were that cocaine was primarily a drug of choice of affluent, suburban whites. Law enforcement agencies and the media have combined their efforts to tie serial murder, child abduction, ritualistic child abuse, and child sacrifice and murder to the activities of unpopular religious groups and sexual minorities.
Crime myths come in many forms. For example, in the mid-1970s the media reported that children had been murdered as the result of the poisoning of their Halloween candy. However, careful investigation revealed something quite different from a wave of poisoning by strangers. There had been only two incidents: one child died from ingesting heroin he found in his uncle's house; the other child was poisoned by his father, who put cyanide in the boy's candy. As with most crime myths, the truth was ignored while tales of mythical savagery circulated (Best & Horiuchi, 1985). To this day local television stations run cautionary stories before each Halloween.
In the early 1980s the media and the government helped create a panic over the issue of child abduction. It was estimated that somewhere between 1.5 and 2.5 million children were abducted from their homes every year; of that number, 50,000 would never be heard from again, presumably the victims of homicides. Pictures of “missing children" appeared on milk cartons, billboards, in newspapers, and on television. Children and parents were cautioned against contacts with strangers. The police in one town even wanted to etch identification numbers on school children's teeth so their bodies would be easier to identify (Dunn, 1994). The child abduction "epidemic” never existed. About 95 percent of those missing children were runaways (most of whom were home within 48 hours) or children abducted by a parent in a custody dispute. The fact is there are no more than 50 to 150 child abductions by strangers each year in the United States (Kappeler & Potter, 2005).
From 1983 to 1985 official estimates and media hype fueled a serial killer panic. Using FBI estimates of unsolved and motiveless homicides, media sources falsely reported that roughly 20 percent of all homicides, or about 4,000 murders a year, were the handiwork of serial killers. The media fed the myth with shocking and untrue confessions from Henry Lee Lucas, Ted Bundy, and others. Congress funded the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program and a behavioral sciences center for the FBI. When the data was subjected to careful analysis, scholars determined that at most there were 50 or 60 serial killer victims a year and that serial killers could account for no more than 2 percent of all homicides (Jenkins, 1996). Serial murder remains an extremely uncommon event.
The media play a vital role in the construction of crime mythology. Through selective interviewing the media can, and often do, fit isolated and rare incidents into what Fishman calls “news themes” (Fishman, 1978). For example, reporting the details of a crime involving an elderly victim and then interviewing a police official in charge of a special unit targeting crimes against the elderly creates a news theme—and can eventually create both a “crime wave” and a "crime myth.” The use of value-laden language also contributes heavily to crime mythology. Youth gang members “prey” upon unsuspecting victims; serial killers “stalk”; child abductors "lurk” in the shadows; organized criminals are “mafiosi.” Such language is common in crime news and substantially changes both the content and the context of crime stories. The media also frequently present misleading data. ... Uncritical reproduction of officially produced statistics often organizes stories into news themes and deflects alternative interpretations of the data.
Crime myths are not just curiosities or examples of sloppy work by journalists. They have tangible and serious policy implications. Spurred by crime mythology, politicians clamor for ever tougher sanctions against criminals. Crime myths divert attention away from the social and cultural forces that cause crime and toward individual pathologies; they reinforce stereotypes of minorities, poor people, and people who are "different."

Diverting Attention from Serious Social Problems

There is a corollary harm to directing our attention to certain kinds of criminality. Exaggerating the incidence and importance of violent crime, for example, deflects our attention other serious issues. ...
The media pay little substantive attention to corporate crime and other forms of white-collar crime. Since the public is far more likely to be seriously harmed by corporate criminals than by violent criminals, this is a major disservice. In addition, ignoring such offenses encourages corporate crime by removing one of the primary modes of deterring that behavior-publicity. The media's neglect of white-collar crime stems from several sources, including: the risk of libel suits; social relationships between media executives and business executives; a pro-business orientation in the media; and the difficulty of adequately investigating and reporting on white-collar crime. In addition, corporations own the major newspapers, television networks, and television stations. Finally, media revenue comes primarily from advertising purchased by corporations.
The processes through which the media amplify and exaggerate crime and focus our attention on disadvantaged and relatively powerless groups in society are also used to deflect and diffuse concern over other types of crime. A case in point is the media's treatment of crimes against women, particularly rape and wife battering.
The media frequently distort rape coverage by referring to "careless” behavior by the victim or provocative actions or clothing. The fact is that rape is a crime of violence, and the behavior of the perpetrator should be the focus. The media further distort the rape issue by giving primary coverage to stranger rapes, failing to emphasize the far more common case in which rape is committed by acquaintances, relatives, and "friends." Stories about non-stranger rape frequently repeat and reflect police skepticism about such cases. Acquaintance rape stories often emphasize cases of false reporting, a very rare occurrence.
Similarly, the media distort the issue of battering in a variety of ways. First, battering is a relatively uncovered story in a crime-saturated news environment. When battering is reported, it is treated as a bizarre spectacle and news stories make use of euphemistic or evasive language (i.e., marital disputes, domestic disturbance, Mouse abuse). Such language obscures the gendered nature of battering and implies the woman may be at fault. Stories on battering often raise the question of why the woman didn't leave her batterer, ignoring the fact that many do try to leave and that many have good reasons not to leave. Battering stories often project a clear implication that women are responsible for their own victimization. In addition, the media frequently overplay the extremely rare occurrences of women abusing their husbands. Rather than focusing on the common crime of spouse battering, media sources often focus on cases where governors have released women from prison who were convicted of murdering abusive husbands. The story often reports that the woman was not living with her husband when she killed him, implying that the danger to the woman had passed. The story usually fails to report that this is precisely the most dangerous time for battered women. News stories frequently imply that pardons and releases encourage battered women to commit acts of violence against their abusers (Barkan, 1997; Devitt, 1992; Devitt & Downey, 1992; Kamen & Rhodes, 1992).
In a particularly egregious example of gender bias, media coverage of school shootings in the 1990s failed to point out that all the offenders were males and a majority of the victims were females (Danner & Carmody, 2001).

Making Sense of Media Representations of Crime

Three fundamental questions for analyzing how the media approach crime issues are: What functions do the media serve?; How do they accomplish those tasks?; and Who benefits from media actions? As one of society's dominant institutions, the media share certain characteristics with other dominant institutions, like the state, corporations, the law enforcement community, and the military....
The media operate in the same ideological arena as do the educational system, religious institutions, and the family. Ideology is a means of organizing impressions, thoughts, knowledge, and observations to interpret the world around us. The media most frequently voice and, because of their ability to reach such an extensive audience, amplify the views and interests of groups with the greatest political, economic, and social power. Journalists and other media professionals are trained, educated, and socialized to internalize the values and norms of the dominant, mainstream culture. As a result, the media interpret or mediate news, information, and complex issues in a way that is usually consistent with the dominant culture and with the interests of powerful groups. The audience is, of course, free to interpret reports and stories by subjecting them to rigorous analysis, but people generally lack the time, resources, and information to construct alternative definitions and frameworks in addition to having been socialized in the very same environment that influenced the stories.
The mass media are part of the culture industry that produces tangible products. In general, but not exclusively, the products they produce will reflect the ideas, conceptions, theories, and views of those with power in society. There have been notable examples of investigative reporters whose efforts, for example, have focused attention on abuses in the juvenile justice system in Chicago, forced the San Francisco police department to change how it tracks officers who abuse force, or exonerated inmates on death row (Coen, 2005; Headden, 2006; Worden, 2006). The media more frequently, however, present viewpoints that are consistent with those held by powerful groups. They present those viewpoints as the "obvious" or "natural" perspectives; alternative views, if presented at all, are clearly labeled as deviant, different, or dangerous. The mass media tend to avoid unpopular and unconventional ideas. They repeat widely held views that do not offend audiences, advertisers, or owners. We discussed media reliance on the portrayal of violence in both news and entertainment programming. These portrayals are not just attention grabbing; they serve other purposes as well. They provide legitimacy to the criminal justice system and the police. They build support for more draconian laws and for more state intervention into people's daily activities. They warn us about people who are different, outsiders, and the dangers of defying social conventions. In other words, they reinforce, they amplify, and they extend the existing state of affairs that makes up the dominant culture and the current distribution of power (Althusser, 1971; Alvarado & Boyd-Barrett, 1992; Hall, 1980; Hall, Critcher, Jefferson, Clarke, & Roberts, 1978; Stevenson, 1995).
Of course, the media are only one half of the equation. The audience is the other half. Are audiences passive individuals who absorb ideological propaganda from newspapers, television, movies, and magazines? Of course not. People rely on other experiences and interactions. Social identities are determined by interactions with all kinds of institutions: the family, the school, the state, language, and the media. However, people generally find their sense of identity and their understanding of the reality around them as a result of social identities molded by those institutions--all of which are “ideological state apparatuses” (Althusser, 1971; Lapley & Westlake, 1988). The media have the capacity to concentrate those definitions and interactions in a way that convinces people that the media are presenting an accurate reflection of everyday lives.
Can audiences resist the power of media representations and definitions? Yes. We have seen that some crime scares and moral panics never get off the ground. Ideological state apparatuses are not always successful in defining people's roles and consciousness. While the mass media relay certain ideological images, the audience-if it has the ability, the resources, and the inclination--can remold, adapt, and integrate those messages into an entirely different system of meaning (Althusser, 1971; Berger, 1991; Hall, 1980; Hall et al., 1978; McQuail, 1994),
Mass media (movies, television, news organizations) form a culture industry in modern capitalist societies. They sell their products. The shape and content of those products will be influenced by the economic interests of the organization producing the products. Businesses operating in the culture industry must cater to the needs of advertisers. News shows are set up in standardized formats that cater to the demands of advertising. News must be fitted into the air time and column inches left over after paid advertising is accounted for. As a result, a standard format with news, weather, and sports segments has evolved around the needs of advertisers. They are unlikely to sponsor programs that attack their interests.
Media businesses must maximize their audiences. They do this in several ways. First, they include heavy doses of sex and violence. Second, they appeal to noncontroversial, mainstream views-trying to achieve a non offensive middleground on most issues. Finally, they treat the news as light entertainment, something not requiring a great deal of thought or attention on the part of the reader or viewer. In the process, they reduce the danger of alternative interpretations of a story by the audience.
In general we can safely say that: (1) ownership and economic control of the media are important factors in determining the content of media messages and (2) the media are a powerful influence in shaping public consciousness. The media are something of an irresistible force in modern society. The media are instrumental but not the only players in defining the terms through which we think about the world around us (Marcuse, 1991; Strinati, 1995). Stuart Hall points out that there is a "preferred reading" of the media's message that buttresses the dominant political, economic, and social relations in society. However, it is not the only interpretation. Some audiences "negotiate” that message and transform it slightly. Others read that message from a very different perspective and create "oppositional” meanings that are in direct conflict with the views of the powerful. That is how we should interpret crime news. We must ask questions: Where did that information come from? Who supplied it? Do they have a vested interest in how we react to that information? We must begin to deconstruct the taken-for granted “common sense" messages of the media.