Media and Crime
Candis M. Cardenas
Introduction to Crime and CausesPSY303
Argosy University
Media and Crime
Crime has always existed, but in the last few decades it has become the focus of many media outlets and “has made a dramatic entrance into North American popular culture” (Dowler, Fleming, & Muzzatti, 2006, p. 840). Notes that some of the fascination culminates from “the need of various groups to see others as active participants in criminal cultures, as different” (2006, p. 840) in addition to the “highly skewed presentation of crime stories [by the media] on select forms of violent crime and crime victims” (p. 840). News is intended to inform the public of events that affect citizens or are of human interest by providing facts. Before the technological era, news came in the print medium of newspapers, which was the only instrument for communities to communicate generally. Now there are mass instruments in use that include radio, television, magazines, internet, digital media, outdoor media, recordings and reproductions, cinema, cellular phones, video games, broadcasts, etc. Crime in the news can be perceived as an ornate due to the manner in which the many stories are presented as if to blur the line between providing information versus a Realty-TV form of entertainment. This report is analyzes two crime stories that focus on different crimes, the articles purpose, the portrayal of the criminal justice system, the authors reactions, and theoretical explanations of behavioral causation.
Purpose.
There are two crime news articles in review, the first story reports criminal “charges of possession with intent to distribute heroin, and distribution of heroin resulting in death” (Parker, 2016, p. 1). In the second story, the criminal “had pleaded guilty to two felony counts of criminal mischief for attempting with a college roommate to break into two