News, Crime and Culture

Crime is always newsworthy. But is crime reporting as value-free and objective as we would like to think? Is crime reporting concerned exclusively with issues of good and evil, justice and the law? Or is it part of a broader and much more specific ideology, underpinned by an essentially conservative agenda?The link between news reports of crime or disorder and public perception becomes increasingly clear, as public reaction to the murder of Sarah Payne and the fuel crisis has shown. News, Crime and Culture explores these links, assessing the relation between culture, criminality and social control, and in particular the ways in which news reports reinforce particular responses to race, poverty, class and gender. Maggie Wykes uncovers these links through a variety of high-profile events featured in the news, spanning the last twenty years of the twentieth century. She examines such issues as child abuse, football hooliganism, homelessness, youth culture, inner-city crime, prostitution, pornography, homosexuality, and domestic violence. Using case studies and a range of methodological analyses, Wykes turns the business of crime reporting inside out, revealing the hidden agendas that not only report but shape our view of the world in often insidious ways.

Pollyanna Ruiz is a Fellow in the Department of Media and Communication at the London School of Economics.