Misinterpretation of Actual Nature of Crime in Media

Media usually presents a misleading account of the actual nature of crime. For most of the people in this modern world of globalization, media is a primary medium of indirect knowledge on numerous crime related problems. Such misinterpretation of crimes is an important issue, since the perceptions of the public about the crime do not match the statistics that is presented by the law enforcement. This essay will elaborate on the assessment of misinterpretation of the actual nature of crimes in the media word, in the context of crime rate as well as the media for profit.

Media often presents inaccurate and irrelevant information about many of the frequent occurring crimes. This misinterpretation of the nature of the crimes is related to the actual definition of media- “newsworthy”. Misinterpretation are indirectly affecting the mindset of the people and influencing the way people think about a particular crime (Bandura, 2017). The “newsworthy” or the selected stories consists of numerous specific ‘news values’. Some of its examples include the timeliness, prominence and the impact of these stories on the common audiences. One of the examples of selective reporting is over representation of the violent crime like that of assault and homicide. The violent crimes are usually over reported as they reflect what the public consider to be as important and hence, are a much more serious concern of the audiences. As mentioned by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, on the crimes in the year 2013, property crimes made up more percentage of crime in comparison to the violent crimes. The statistics showed that property crimes made up to 80% of the reported crime, whereas that of the violent crimes made up about 19 to 20% (Tonry, 2014). Hence, it is clear that the rate of violent crime is reducing. However, the violent crimes are still much more prominent in the media than the rest others. Media significantly misinterprets the violent crimes and to the audiences, it is regarded as one of the most widespread crime types prevailing in the society. It strengthens the fact that media presents irrelevant information about the most recurrent types of crimes taking place in the society and therefore, in this way it misinterprets the nature of the crime.

Along with this, media also misleads the community about the nature of crime in context to the rate of crimes. According to the study conducted by Gill (2014), it is indicated that the public perceived rates of crime as rapidly increasing. However, in the last ten years it is to be noted that the overall rates of crime have been reducing than it used to be in earlier days. However, exception to this is the property crime offences, which is greatly increasing. With the same, as according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics of 2015, between 2014 and 2015, the total number of victims of the crime has been decreased in maximum of the offences against person categories like robbery, but it increased for all the property related crime offences (Ackerman & Rossmo, 2015). Moreover, it is also to be noted that the victims of the other theft has been increased by five percent in the year 2015 and it is the highest level of victims recorded since the year 2012 (Allen, 2016). However, despite these statistics, media continuously misrepresents the nature of crimes in context to the crime rates. Such misperceptions of the nature of crime, as they are presented by the media, results in public believing false information about the crime rates. This in turn will negatively affect the mindset of the people as this may lead to moral panics that are a rapid build-ups of the public concerns. Along with this, the media reports and distorts irrelevant information to the public about the actual crime. Such distortion of the evidences may have a notable impact on the society and this may further create false perceptions about the nature of crime in the minds of the common man.

Selective Reporting in Media

Violent crime is one of the sources of concern for the entire community; however it is not the most frequent kind of crime in the entire society. This kind of public concern about the entire frequency of the different crimes stems from the media and it is not reflective of the genuine kind of statistics of the crime. The entire essay will help in explaining the prevalence of the violent kind of crime along with different other kinds of the crime that includes white collar along with property crime as well. It has been seen that in media, there are different kind of violent crimes that takes place in the media and this is one of the most prevalent kind of crimes in the entire society as well (Binford, 2018).

However, it has been seen that the different kind of crimes that is shown in the news is selective in nature and these kinds of crimes that are reported in the media are newsworthy along with analysis of the cause of such violent crimes as well. Furthermore, it has been seen that violent kind of crimes is one of the most serious concerns for the entire community that is in comparison to the different kind of white collar kind of crimes and it is heavily and highly reported in the media as well. Moreover, the violent kind of crime includes the different kind of crimes that includes the five kinds of categories of violent crime that includes different kind of sexual assaults, homicide and robbery issues as well (Ferguson, 2015).

Furthermore, there are different kinds of crimes out of the five kinds of crimes that have been reduced to a great extent and this created huge kind of other reported crimes as well. However, furthermore it has been seen that the different kind of kidnapping along with other homicide activities has been dropped to a great extent in the last few years and it is not that frequent in nature in the society as well (Pinotti, 2015). However, in the media it is still treated as the most frequent kind of crimes and this is largely causing due to the violent kind of crimes are most crucial issue to the audiences and it creates greater kind of impact as well (Patton et al., 2014).

However there are various other types of crime which the media fails to reflect upon. These crimes include crimes like Property Crime, White collar crimes, organized crime and consensual crime.

Public Perception of Crime Rates vs Statistics

According to Davies, Francis and Jupp (2016), Property crime takes place in forms of burglary, motor vehicle theft, arson and larceny. These crimes are a common type of crimes in the United States and millions of these occur in the given country. As a preventive measure many Americans install burglary security measures and alarms in their homes, cars and related places.

Although this kind of crime does not involve any physical assault but it is equally threatening.  There has been a decline in the rates of property crime but there still exists a major problem and leads to loss of billions of dollars.

The next kind of crime is the white collar crime. Only violent crime and property crime are generally portrayed by the media and television newscasts but this is not the case. However, white collared crime is arguably much more harmful and leads to economic loss along with physical injury, illness and sometimes death. White collared crime can be described as a crime committed by a person of a generally high status in course of general operation (Fleischman et al., 2014). These crimes include crimes like shop repair fund, theft by bookkeepers and other related employees.  Health care and other professional fraud which occurs are genera serious ones which are often missed out by the media.

The next time of crime which generally goes unnoticed is the organized crime. This refers to a crime which is generally organized by a group of organizations who exist to commit such crimes and cheat people.  Mostly Italian Americans are involved in such crimes along with Irish Americans, African Americans and Jews. This reflects that Italians generally have been dominating such crimes. Organized crime involves earning considerable money from services and product with respect to activities like illegal drugs, prostitution, pornography and loan sharking (Types of Crime., 2018).  Recently trash hauling and vending industry have also been involved in such crimes.

The last category of crimes is the consensual crimes where the behavior of the people indulges them in engaging in crimes willingly even when such actions violate the law. This includes illegal drug use, prostitution engagement and gambling (Kaplan, Robert & Binder, 2014). Hence, it can be stated that there exists various other crimes apart from violent crimes which often go unnoticed by the media but are prevalent in the society.

References

Ackerman, J. M., & Rossmo, D. K. (2015). How far to travel? A multilevel analysis of the residence-to-crime distance. Journal of Quantitative Criminology, 31(2), 237-262.

Allen, M. (2016). Police-reported crime statistics in Canada, 2015. Juristat: Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, 1.

Bandura, A. (2017). Mechanisms of moral disengagement. In Insurgent terrorism (pp. 85-115).

Binford, L. (2018). Legacies of State Violence and Transitional Justice in Latin America: A Janus-Faced Paradigm?.

Davies, P., Francis, P., & Jupp, V. (Eds.). (2016). Invisible crimes: Their victims and their regulation. Springer.

Ferguson, C. J. (2015). Does media violence predict societal violence? It depends on what you look at and when. Journal of Communication, 65(1).

Fleischman, A., Werbeloff, N., Yoffe, R., Davidson, M., & Weiser, M. (2014). Schizophrenia and violent crime: a population-based study. Psychological medicine, 44(14), 3051-3057.

Gill, C. (2014). Community-oriented policing to reduce crime, disorder and fear and increase satisfaction and legitimacy among citizens: A systematic review. Journal of Experimental Criminology, 10(4), 399-428.

Kaplan, J., Weisberg, R., & Binder, G. (2014). Criminal law: Cases and materials. Wolters Kluwer Law & Business.

Patton, D. U., Hong, J. S., Ranney, M., Patel, S., Kelley, C., Eschmann, R., & Washington, T. (2014). Social media as a vector for youth violence: A review of the literature. Computers in Human Behavior, 35, 548-553.

Pinotti, P. (2015). The economic costs of organised crime: Evidence from Southern Italy. The Economic Journal, 125(586).

Tonry, M. (2014). Why crime rates are falling throughout the Western world. Crime and justice, 43(1), 1-63.

Types of Crime. (2018). Saylordotorg.github.io. Retrieved 23 April 2018, from https://saylordotorg.github.io/text_social-problems-continuity-and-change/s11-02-types-of-crime.html