Policing and the Media

Frank Leishman, Paul Mason

• Publisher: Willan
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9781135995669
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Social Sciences

Policing and the Media provides an up-to-date overview of the changing dynamics and dimensions of the relationships that exist on the British police-media nexus. Factual, fictional and factional representations of policing in the media are the major - and for a great many citizens probably the sole - influence in shaping their perceptions and opinions about crime, law and order, community safety, police efficiency and integrity, not to mention the efficacy of criminal justice and penal policy. This book deals with all three representations, noting the lines between such clear divisions are increasingly blurred and the concepts of reality, realism and representation, slippery and complex.

Chapter 1
Introduction: reality, realism and representation

Reality, realism and representation

In introducing a special media-focused issue of the often under-celebrated Criminal Justice Matters, Kevin Stenson and Hazel Croall observed in their editorial:

The media are not simply neutral conduits of information about crime; indeed, the institutional arrangements that organise the media and the rhetorical forms through which crime is represented can play a vital role in shaping and reflecting our deepest personal and cultural fears about crime and insecurity. (Stenson and Croall, 2001: 3)

We could equally substitute ‘the police’ for ‘the media’ in that quotation, which makes it, in our estimation, a useful thought to keep in mind throughout the ensuing chapters.

We have divided the book into three themed sections: facts, fictions and factions, though as will quickly become evident, the lines between such clear divisions are increasingly blurred and the concepts of reality, realism and representation slippery and complex.

Our first section focuses on the ‘factual’ and considers various dimensions of the construction, contents and effects of media images of policing and crime. In Chapter 2 we outline what is ‘known’ from previous studies and syntheses about the nature of crime coverage and its consequences in terms of possible effects on behaviour and in relation to the shaping of public perceptions of police efficiency and effectiveness. Chapter 3 extends the discussion by exploring the dynamics of what R. C. Mawby (2002) calls ‘police image work’, an area of activity that has become increasingly professionalised in recent years. Using the media to promote themselves is a well established feature of American law enforcement organisations, the FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin, for example, frequently featuring articles with titles like ‘Media interviews: a systematic approach for success’ (Vance, 1997) and ‘Fine tune your news briefing’ (Sparks and Staszak, 2000). We note in Chapter 3 how the cause of corporate communications has been taken up enthusiastically by the British police (Boyle, 1999a), to the extent that media relations can no longer be regarded as a mere adjunct to police operations and strategic planning.

The three chapters in our ‘fiction’ section focus primarily on British televisual fictional representations of policing, a rich vein of the policing image on the small screen which has not been replicated in cinematic representations. Whereas one can reel off a string of memorable gangster movie titles such as, Scarface (1932), White Heat (1949) and The Godfather (1972), courtroom dramas such as Twelve Angry Men (1957) and Jagged Edge (1985) and prison films such as Birdman of Alcatraz (1962), Midnight Express (1978) and The Shawshank Redemption (1995), it is a much harder task to find equivalent police films – Assault on Precinct 13 (1978), Blue Steel (1990) and ID (1995) perhaps. Reiner points out that ‘Cop movies do not form a comparable generic pattern. At most, there has been a handful of relatively short cycles of movies about cops’ (Reiner, 1981: 194–5).

While a genre of police films may be problematic in the cinema, it is possible to delineate a body of television drama whose focus is law enforcement and it is this which forms the content of Chapters 4, 5 and 6. Notions of ‘a heritage of realism’ and expansive iconography in these programmes complicate considerations of ‘reality’ and ‘realism’ in representations of policing and policework. Reiner (1994) comments that despite the prevalence of crime fiction dating back to the 1820s, the emergence of the police officer as protagonist is relatively recent. Even when they did finally appear, police figures were peripheral, playing second fiddle to heroic sleuths like Sherlock Holmes. It was not until the late 1940s that the police procedural appeared: ‘mystery plots in which the investigation is undertaken by a professional police detective, portrayed as functioning as one of a team, not as an exceptionally gifted individual’ (Reiner, 1994: 17). As we discuss in Chapter 4, the police procedural has been the focus of some of the most successful dramas in television history: Dixon of Dock Green ran for 18 years; Z Cars, which ran for 16 years, had audience ratings of 14 million during its first series (Hurd, 1981); and The Bill which has been running for 18 years still reaches more than 10 million viewers a week.

The relationship between the reality of policing and these popular representations of it is complex, as Dyer describes:

Reality is always more extensive and complicated than any system of representation can possibly comprehend and we always sense that this is so – representation never ‘gets’ reality which is why human history has produced so many different and changing ways of trying to get it. (Dyer, 1993: 3)

Representations of policing are relative to the individuals producing and consuming them. There is no neutral, objective representation of the police in fiction, hence notions of ‘reality’ and ‘authenticity’ are relative, although, as O’Shaughnessy observes, ‘We may decide that one set of representations are true or that they are more true than others’ (O’Shaughnessy, 1999: 40). Any assessment of the realism and authenticity of fictional representations of the police is based on the viewer’s own knowledge and experience of them. Although this knowledge may have been acquired through some direct contact with the police, it is likely to be heavily supplemented with information gleaned from newspapers, television, radio, film and the Internet. Fictional portrayals, one such source, can be seen to address the gaps in viewer knowledge. This ‘completion of the half-formed picture’ (Hurd, 1981: 57) suggests that audiences tend to accept as true those parts of a drama that are beyond their experience. In research on The Bill, Mason (1992) notes how the clear-up rate for notifiable offences in 1990 was 34 per cent compared to 78.7 per cent in The Bill. Furthermore, audiences steeped in cop show tradition mean the police drama must incorporate a ‘heritage of realism’ from previous police shows. In Chapters 4 and 5 we show, for example, how the values first espoused in Dixon of Dock Green are still recognisable in police dramas of the twenty-first century.

While all cop shows are, to some extent, lineal descendants of George Dixon, the modern crime drama features police officers who are often less than a chip off the old cop and more splintered with rougher, less well-defined edges (Reiner, 2000a). In Chapter 6 we suggest that a thinner blurred line now exists between crime and law enforcement, where representations of the police are more complex and where rule-breaking is often an essential part of thief-taking. With moral uncertainty roaming the new ‘copland’, audiences seeking the comfortable and monochromatic world of good versus evil once inhabited by George Dixon must now turn to the synoptic realms of infotainment.

Chapters 7 and 8 examine various aspects of the uneasy amalgam of ‘fact’ and ‘fiction’ that often goes under the name of ‘infotainment’ or ‘faction’, the staple of which is the ‘reality’ TV cop show, such as Blues and Twos and Police Camera Action. The rise and popularity of this ‘hybrid’ form raises further uncomfortable questions about the interrelationships between reality, realism and representation. As Annette Hill notes:

For many critics of reality programming, its sensational format has blurred the boundaries between information and entertainment to such an extent that it can no longer be associated with the aims of the traditional documentary. (2000: 232)

In Chapter 8, we discuss this underlying concern by speculating on the possible effects for policing and the justice process should the incursion of cameras into courtrooms be extended. It may seem a little far-fetched but the prospect of watching the activities of inmates of the ‘Big Brother Court House’ is, perhaps, the reality TV show concept that could truly ‘end ‘em all’.

Our primary purpose in writing this book has always been to produce a volume that brings together, in one place, a contemporary examination of the British policing image in all three domains of fact, fiction and faction. We hope, too, that it will inform and perhaps even entertain along the way.

Part One
Facts

Chapter 2
Contents and effects

Introduction

The police are paid to be suspicious and there can be little doubt that, as an occupational group, they tend to mistrust the media, with its agenda to entertain and propensity to misinform the public. However, if asked on some professional management development programme to conduct a SWOT (strengths–weaknesses–opportunities–threats) analysis around the theme of the media and its implications for policing, senior police officers would not find it difficult to contribute something to each quadrant, for example:

• strength – in that harnessing the media effectively to promote the police can in all likelihood do more to provide symbolic reassurance to more of the public for more of the time and at less cost than can a plethora of patrolling police officers;
• weakness – as in stumbling spokespersons and maladroit media management can have deleterious effects on public perceptions of the police and levels of confidence in them;
• opportunity – to present the organisation, its operations and its objectives (and of course oneself and one’s own career ambitions) in a positive light;
• threat – because of the media’s watchdog role and potential to expose areas of organisational ineffectiveness or malpractice.

Feeding into such an analysis would be a mix of professional experience, instinct, knowledge and, quite probably, prejudice about the contents and consequences of mass media coverage of crime and policing. This chapter offers a review of what is known from previous research and syntheses about these relationships and interrelationships, focusing around a cluster of questions which continue to preoccupy academics and practitioners alike, questions such as:

• What is the nature of the media’s treatment of crime?
• On balance does this coverage present the police in a positive or negative light?
• Do media images cause crime?
• To what extent does media coverage promote fear of crime?

The first section addresses the first and second questions by reviewing conclusions from previous studies, while the second considers the ‘effects’ questions, around which a veritable research industry has arisen, especially with regard to violent images and their potential effects on children. Our focus in this chapter is primarily on the ‘factual’ media, though as will already be evident from the introduction, there is much crossover and boundary blurring at work, which serves to further complicate the media–policing equation, making it difficult to isolate completely the factual from the fictional and factional. As Howitt observes:

Factual crime in newspapers and on radio and television is the result of a value-ridden news selection process. Partly the emphasis of news on drama which sensationalizes and personalizes events determines what is included. Nevertheless, what is read, heard and seen as news is something other than ‘just the facts’ … There is some reason to believe that much non-fictional coverage of crime shares some of the production values of fictional programmes. (1998: 28)

With that in mind let us identify some of the key issues.

Contents

As Robert Reiner has rightly noted (1997, 2000a, 2000b), throughout the twentieth century, public images of crime and policing have largely been constructed and contested via the various mass media which interact with audiences in a dialectical way, creating ‘a complex loop of interdependence’ (2000b: 53). This widening gyre generates recurring rafts of anxieties and questions about media contents and effects, resulting in debates which seem to have been revisited and intensified with each new development in communications technology from the humble transistor radio to high-tech text messaging WAPs (web access phones). The police themselves have often been prominent and vocal in articulating ‘respectable fears’ (Pearson, 1983) about the media’s pernicious effects on morality. As Reiner recounts (1997), during the First World War, the Chief Constable of Wigan blamed the cinema for rises in juvenile crime, while some six decades later, James Anderton, Chief Constable of Greater Manchester, became associated with the late Mary Whitehouse’s long-running campaign to clean up television. More recently, senior officers in London have publicly berated British movies like Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and certain advertisements for glamourising gun violence and ‘laddish culture’ (Fogg, 2000).

The characterisation of the media as criminogenic in the sense that they undermine respect for authority and catalyse ‘copycatting’ criminal behaviour, particularly amongst the young, has enjoyed more repeats over the years than the typical TV summer schedule. The thrust of this perspective was succinctly captured in the comment column of the middle-market tabloid Daily Mail. Reacting to a Broadcasting Standards Commission report which raised concerns about storylines in television ‘soap’ drama, the paper opined under the sub-head ‘sordid soaps’:

Heroin addiction, domestic violence, prostitution, murder – all are routinely shown at times when, as programme-makers know perfectly well, children are certain to be watching. And nobody at the BBC or ITV seems unduly concerned at the coarsening effect all of this may have on impressionable young minds. (Daily Mail, 10 May 2002: 12)

This ‘subversive’ view of the media (Reiner, 1997) competes with an academically influential critical perspective that puts the media and the police in the dock for essentially colluding in creating crime waves and propagating the panics that fuel the public’s respectable fears about the nature and risk of criminal victimisation. What Reiner dubs the ‘hegemonic’ view of media-made criminality is scathing of the media’s heavy reliance on the police as ‘primary definers’ in the construction of news (Welch et al., 1997). The mass mediated ‘folk devil’ has come in a variety of guises in the history of ‘respectable fears’, from Pearson’s (1983) hooligans, through Cohen’s (1972) mods and rockers, Hall et al.’s (1978) black muggers and, more recently, asylum seekers (Howard, 2001). As Hunt (1997) puts it, ‘every moral panic has its scapegoat’ and ‘elite-engineered’ crises of hegemony recurrently reinforce and perpetuate via the media myths about youth, race, ethnicity and crime (Hall et al., 1978; Webster, 2001; see also Chapter 3). The resultant distorted picture of the ‘crime problem’ in the media ensures that the crimes of the powerful are rarely exposed and accounts, at least in part, for why these ‘real villains’ seldom have their white collars felt, while other sections of the community are routinely ‘over-policed’ (White and Perrone, 1997). In its extremest form, the ‘media-as-hegemonic’ thesis (Reiner, 1997: 190) demonises the media for demonising. Nevertheless, from this critical tradition have emerged compelling questions about the media and the nature of their relationship with the police as news sources, concerns that continue to have powerful resonance today.

Indecent exposure?

A recurrent finding from content analysis studies is that crime is an ‘over-exposed’ topic in the media generally, receiving a disproportionate amount of coverage relative to other major social issues, including what many would regard to be greater social harms. Estimates about the proportion of news output given over to crime show considerable variation, with some researchers (Reiner, 1997) placing it at well over half, depending upon the definitions and methodology used. What is not in dispute, however, are the facts that crime news is a global media staple and that reporting trends across continents show remarkable similarities (Reiner, 1997; Howitt, 1998).

Reiner, Livingstone and Allen, in their major study of mass media representations of crime and criminal justice since 1945, revealed a threefold increase in newspaper coverage of ‘central crime’ stories from between 7 and 9 per cent in the period 1945–51, to around 21 per cent between 1985 amd 1991 (Reiner et al., 2000a: 182). A similar rising trend (albeit with some cyclical fluctuations in between) was discerned for stories on the criminal justice system and on crime policy. The proportion of media content given over to crime has typically been seen as linked to market position, with ‘lower-market’ tabloid newspapers such as The Sun exhibiting the highest proportion (Roshier, 1973; Williams and Dickinson, 1993). Reiner and his colleagues present persuasive evidence supporting a shift over the postwar period towards ‘tabloidisation’ of the quality p...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: reality, realism and representation
• Facts
• Contents and effects
• Proceeding in a promotional direction
• Fictions
• Patrol, plods and coppers
• Thief-takers and rule-breakers
• The changing contours of TV copland
• Factions
• That's infotainment
• Trial by media – courting contempt
• Summing up
• References
• Index