U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government, Department of Justice.

NCJRS Virtual Library

The Virtual Library houses over 235,000 criminal justice resources, including all known OJP works.
Click here to search the NCJRS Virtual Library

Crime and the Media: The Post-Modern Spectacle

NCJ Number
168074
Editor(s)
D Kidd-Hewitt, R Osborne
Date Published
1995
Length
266 pages
Annotation
Drawing on criminology, media studies, and post-modern theory, 11 essays consider the symbiosis between real crime and its media representations, with attention to this matter in the United Kingdom; issues of race, gender, class, and power intersect with traditional ideas of media dominance and the forms of social control that are exercised through media agendas and ideological representations of social realities.
Abstract
The first essay reviews the criminological history of the debate and the kinds of questions that have structured it, followed by an essay that examines the nature of the current debates in relation to the electronic media and its place within post-modern society. A third essay grounds these arguments in a discussion of how television constructs and reinforces a moral universe within popular culture. Another essay looks at how British films and television portray stereotypical black police officers and black criminals, followed by an essay that considers issues associated with child sexual abuse becoming a key media issue in the late 1980's and early 1990's, predominantly in Great Britain and America. A critique of media reporting of "date rape" in Great Britain in 1993 (when a number of such cases drew the attention of the media) argues that media postures, as well as the trials, reflected a male perspective that attributed false allegations to the victims. Remaining essays address how gender issues are portrayed within the police subculture in two British television fictional police dramas, the rationale for British television portrayals of prisons in television documentaries, media coverage of white-collar crime, media dramatization of what proved to be a self-abduction, and what viewers' response to horror films says about the state of viewers' moral condition. For individual essays, see NCJ-168075-85. Chapter notes, tables, bibliographies, and a subject index