Newsmaking Criminology: Reflections on the Media, Intellectuals, and Crime

• NCJ Number: 116896
• Journal: Justice Quarterly Volume: 5 Issue: 4 Dated: (December 1988) Pages: 565-587
• Author(s): G Barak
• Date Published: 1988
• Length: 23 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Issue Overview
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: This essay was presented as a paper at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, Chicago, August 1987.

Annotation

Although academicians in criminology and criminal justice have come to appreciate the importance of the media in constructing ideological images of crime and punishment, apparently they have not considered how to use mass communications for the purpose of informing, interpreting, and altering those images to reflect more realistically the social, political, and economic conditions of crime and social control.

Abstract

Beginning with an analysis of the relationships among the developing political economy of the mass media, intellectuals, and conceptions of crime and justice, this essay introduces a criminological practice that can take advantage of the available opportunities in the production of crime news. I call this practice 'newsmaking criminology.' It refers to the conscious efforts of criminologists and others to participate in the presentation of 'newsworthy' items about crime and justice. (Publisher abstract)