Constructing "Crime": Media Coverage of Individual and Organizational Wrongdoing

• NCJ Number: 170411
• Journal: Justice Quarterly Volume: 14 Issue: 2 Dated: (June 1997) Pages: 243-263
• Author(s): W S Lofquist
• Date Published: 1997
• Length: 21 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Report (Study/Research)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This article presents the methodology and results of content analyses of media coverage of two widely reported "crimes" that occurred in the Rochester, N.Y., area in 1994: the disappearance of a 4-year-old girl and the collapse and flooding of the largest salt mine in North America.

Abstract

An individual is the central figure in one case; the other case focuses on a business. In many other respects, these cases are similar. They provide an opportunity to examine and critique media coverage of very different types of behaviors, each of which may be defined as a crime. The articles used in this research were taken from the Rochester "Democrat and Chronicle," the major daily newspaper for the Rochester and western Finger Lakes region. The author conducted content analyses of every relevant story published in the 3-month period following each event. A 3-month period of study was used because it was deemed by the author to provide ample time for developments in each story and for consideration of their causes. Since both cases were unresolved at the time of the media coverage, this allowed the study to examine whether media coverage of the two cases involved hegemonic assumptions by the media to "fill in the blanks" left by the unresolved cases. The study concludes that the media created and reproduced hegemonic understandings of events. In each case the hegemonic narrative promoted by the media ran contrary to the most likely fact scenario. In the case of the missing child, the facts supported an abduction by a family member or acquaintance, but the media fostered a scenario of a stranger abduction. The mine-flooding case involved abundant evidence of inappropriate mining practices by the company as the cause of the mine collapse, but the media ignored the causes of the collapse and company negligence in favor of reporting on the consequences of the collapse. The media suggested that the mine collapse was an unforeseen and unforeseeable natural occurrence; this was the precise scenario fostered and favored by the mining company. 4 tables and 69 references