A court reporter has to remember to do nothing to prejudice a fair trial. This is the basis of the strict rules of contempt of court” . Three conditions: all reports must be… Accurate Balanced Contemporaneous

1. Youth, Crime and Media

2. Do the media just report crime?
 Specialist role of the court reporter
 Role of gatekeepers, especially police
 Media as a vehicle to foster public
awareness, fear and condemnation
e.g. Anti Social Behaviour Orders,
newsworthiness of violent crime
 ‘Real crime’ as media entertainment

3. Crime and court reporting
 “a court reporter has to remember to do
nothing to prejudice a fair trial. This is the
basis of the strict rules of contempt of
court” (Clother 1998: 205)
 Three conditions: all reports must be…
1. Accurate
2. Balanced
3. Contemporaneous

4. Gatekeepers as informants
 Specialist court reporters are able to
develop important contacts / sources
 Police secrecy is favoured because
reporters are more likely to secure
exclusivity to a particular case (Chibnall
1981)
 Defendants, prosecutors, witnesses,
etc. can be interviewed but only
reported on after the trial has concluded

5. Journalist restrictions
Crime reporters will frequently receive
restriction orders on what they can
report, such as:
 Names and places of residence of
persons involved in the trial
 Certain evidence deemed inconclusive
 In some instances, whole cases until
verdicts have been passed

6. Media as public vehicle for the
‘name and shame’ culture
Anti Social Behaviour Act 2003:
 ‘Intimidating’ groups of two or more young
people can be dispersed
 Noise and graffiti are criminalised
 Local authorities given powers to close
noisy pubs and clubs
 Media allowed to name ‘anti-social’ kids
(Muncie 2004)

7. Consequences of ASBOs
 According to Young and Matthews
(2003) the public have become more
intolerant of ever-widening deviant
behaviour (as defined by law
enforcement agencies)
 Fear and loathing of young people has
increased as an outcome of ASBOs

8. Consequences of news
reporting about violent crime
 Content analysis of news shows major
differences between offences, victims and
offenders represented by media compared
to official crime statistics (Reiner 2002)
 In one month of 1989, 64.5% of UK news
crime stories dealt with violent crime but
crime surveys found that only 6% of
reported crimes were violent (Williams and
Dickenson 1993: 40)
 The media construction of ‘mugging’ as a
crime problem justifies more punitive
sentencing of offenders (Hall et al 1978)

9. ‘Real crime’ television
 Crime Scene Investigations: fascination with
the ‘hidden’ activities of criminal investigators
 CCTV provides cheap, popular, highly ‘realist’
programming e.g. Police, Camera, Action
 Crimewatch and Crimestoppers: media
producers work alongside investigators to
reconstruct and solve crimes
 Media content and imagery may distort
statistical evidence (the BBC’s Crimewatch
tells its audience ‘Don’t have nightmares’) –
there is disproportionate media coverage of
violent crime (Marsh 1991)

10. ‘Real crime’ television
 Crime Scene Investigations: fascination with
the ‘hidden’ activities of criminal investigators
 CCTV provides cheap, popular, highly ‘realist’
programming e.g. Police, Camera, Action
 Crimewatch and Crimestoppers: media
producers work alongside investigators to
reconstruct and solve crimes
 Media content and imagery may distort
statistical evidence (the BBC’s Crimewatch
tells its audience ‘Don’t have nightmares’) –
there is disproportionate media coverage of
violent crime (Marsh 1991)