A rapidly evolving digital media landscape, inhabited by a network of outlets, is amplifying crime consciousness, exploiting crime’s infotainment potential, and reshaping public attitudes towards crime and criminal justice. At the same time, in depth analysis of crime news has dropped off the criminological radar. In this chapter, we argue that because criminologists have not kept pace with transforming news media and markets, crime news remains under-researched and under-conceptualized. We begin by revisiting three classic concepts that continue to dominate crime news research: newsworthiness, moral panic, and penal populism. Though these concepts are still important for understanding crime news, their institutionalization and taxonomical application within criminology has marginalized analysis of dramatic shifts in the production and nature of crime news, the markets in which it circulates, and its power to shape crime consciousness and criminal justice rhetoric and practice. We then explore how ‘trial by media’ and ‘scandal hunting’ are not only redefining crime news, but also exposing institutional failures in public protection and challenging both the efficacy and the legitimacy of the criminal justice system. It is in this context of an unruly networked digital environment that we situate the disruptive challenge posed to criminal justice by the rise of what we define as media justice.
Chapter
11. Crime news, trial by media, and scandal hunting
Chris Greer and Eugene McLaughlin
Chapter
11. News power, crime and media justice
Chris Greer and Eugene McLaughlin
News corporations are reconstituting and dramatically extending their power to shape crime consciousness and influence criminal justice rhetoric and practice. At the same time, in depth crime news research has fallen off the criminological radar. In this chapter we argue that because criminologists have not kept pace with the transforming news environment, the relations between news power, crime, and criminal justice remain under-researched and under-conceptualized. We begin by revisiting two concepts that continue to dominate UK crime news research: news values and moral panic. Though these concepts are still important for understanding news power, crime, and criminal justice, there has been a qualitative shift in how increasingly adversarial corporations manufacture crime news in a 24/7 digital environment. We identify ‘trial by media’ and ‘scandal hunting’ as journalistic practices that news corporations are perfecting through the relentless exposure of institutional failure as the cause of a systemic crisis in public protection and criminal justice. It is in this intermediatized context that we situate the shift from criminal justice to media justice.
