Media Portrayal of a Victim

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Critics admit a false and negative portrayal of victims of crime popularized by mass media. Crime, particularly violent and predatory crime, is not as common as often thought. Crime is uniquely debilitating because it destroys feelings of security and the sense of interpersonal trust that binds a community together. The term media involves all channels of communication and interaction used by mass media (radio, TV, press, the Internet, TV news, etc.).

Thesis

Media exaggerates and portrays false images of a victim and the consequences of crime for a common citizen.

The main problem is that the media distorts its presentation of crime and victimization patterns by selecting particular incidents to report. Unusual, bizarre, violent, and macabre incidents and injured victims receive more media attention. Violent individual crimes are more often portrayed by mass media than common crimes. Following Lurigio et al (1990): “Murder accounted for 26 per cent of the specific crimes mentioned; robbery, assault, and rape together accounted for another 20 per cent. In contrast, common property crimes (burglary and larceny/theft) accounted for less than 6 per cent of the crimes mentioned. Tax cheating, embezzlement, and drunken driving accounted for only 3 per cent.” (p. 54). These percentages bear no relationship to the percentage of the total number of victims each actually represents. This presentation either reflects a serious misunderstanding of victims statistics or it reflects an attempt to distort information. The use of absolute numbers rather than rates conveys a more pessimistic message about the magnitude of crime (Buckingham & Judith 2004).

Australian mass media portrays victims as suffers who have not been protected by the state and police. Clear but perhaps unexpected differences have been discovered among different sex, race, education, occupation, and income groups. As might be expected, women are more afraid to become victims than men; women feel less safe in their homes and walking alone at night. This is interesting since men are twice as likely to be victims of violent crime. Women must either avoid high crime situations out of fear or be afraid out of proportion to actual incidence patterns (Buckingham & Judith 2004).

The crime of rape may play an important role in this relationship. Though rape is a low-probability incident, its effect can be so devastating that it may be worthy of the fear women appear to have of it. Men, who are not raped, are not constrained by such fear. Nonwhites and people who are less educated, of lower occupational status, or with lower incomes face much higher probabilities of victimization and appropriately are more fearful of crime. Only 1 in 7 whites report they are afraid in their own homes at night, whereas 1 in 4 nonwhites are fearful. Similar patterns hold for occupational status and income and education levels. Only about 1 in 10 of those ranked in the top status for any of the three characteristics are fearful, as compared with 1 in 4 of people ranked in the lowest status (Anastasio and Costa 2004).

The main categories of victims popularized by media are women and elderly, racial minorities and poor. One might argue that variations in fear depend on the sense of vulnerability, real or imagined, that people have. False images of victims force women to perceive themselves to be physically more vulnerable to criminal victimization, and even though their rate of victimization is not as high as that of men, they are more afraid than men (Buckingham & Judith 2004). The poor and minorities are also fearful, but because they are exposed to more crime and face a greater chance of being a victim, fear is based on a true sense of vulnerability, whereas women’s fear is based on perceived vulnerability. It follows that the elderly will be unrealistically afraid of crime because of their physical vulnerability and that people living in larger, more crime-ridden cities will be appropriately more fearful than people living in less populated and less criminogenic areas (Anastasio & Costa 2004).

Because of false media images, society perceives victims as unfortunate and helpless people who are destined to suffer. Thus, the criminal justice system admits that many victims provoke incidents and crimes (Diefenbach & West 2001). The inconsistencies in public attitudes about victims and in fear of crime are clear in the views different groups have about punishment. Women, who as a group are less likely to be victimized but who are more fearful of crime than their male counterparts, are less likely to believe the courts are not harsh enough and less likely to advocate capital punishment. Blacks, the young, and those with lower occupational status, less education, and lower-income, who are both more likely to be victims and are more fearful (except for the young), also tend to be less punitive. People who can be characterized as white, college-educated, professional, Republicans, or Christians–that is, people least likely to be victims–are the most likely to favour harsher sentences and to support the death penalty. This defies common sense and indicates that attitudes about crime and its control are determined by factors other than the actual threat of crime.

Because of media promotion and false images of victims, almost all individuals believe that people in general limit their activities out of fear, over half believe that residents of their own neighbourhood alter their behaviour, but fewer than half state that they personally have changed their lifestyles. People also depersonalize crime by believing that outsiders–nonresidents–commit most offences within the neighbourhood (Diefenbach & West 2001). Even victims of crime, who as expected view their own community more negatively than nonvictims, cling to the notion that crime is worse elsewhere. Based on these findings, people clearly disassociate themselves from reality and the possibility of criminal victimization. This allows them to feel removed and thus secure from potential harm. But an interesting question arises. Do people, in depersonalizing crime, overestimate national trends or underestimate the local situations? Either possibility has liabilities. If people overestimate the national crime problem, they may support public policies to control crime that are unnecessary. If they minimize their own situation, their concern may not reflect the seriousness of the problem, and their apathy may lead to a perfunctory response to it (Buckingham & Judith 2004).

media portrays that the elderly are no more fearful in their homes or walking alone at night than younger people. Similarly, people living in cities of different sizes varied little in their fear at home. In fact, slightly more people living in rural areas stated they were afraid than people living in the nation’s largest cities. However, residents of larger cities are more likely to indicate there are places near their homes where they are afraid to walk alone at night. Vulnerability alone, perceived or real, is not sufficient to explain why people are fearful of criminal victimization. At times, levels of fear are consistent with victimization patterns, but at other times they are not. The physical vulnerability may explain why women are more fearful than men, but not why the elderly are no more fearful than younger people (Diefenbach & West 2001; McCulloch & Jude 1997).

The media does not speak about such phenomena as victimless crimes. There is, however, another sense in which these transactional “crimes” are victimless—and it is one of overriding significance (Grabe & Drew, 2007). The persons involved in exchanging (illicit) goods and services do not see themselves as victims. They are, therefore, most unlikely to complain to the police. In the absence of such complainants, the difficulties involved in obtaining evidence necessary to enforce these laws are (as we shall see in some detail) virtually insurmountable. It is not necessary, at this point, to consider the issue of whether we may be entitled morally to view another individual as victimized when he does not so view himself (Grabe & Drew, 2007).

What must, however, be emphasized most emphatically is that attempts to proscribe such exchanges through the criminal law invariably have certain objective consequences (those pertaining to enforcement, and others—to be detailed below) regardless of any imputations of victimization that may be made by outside observers (Diefenbach & West 2001; Leishman and Mason 2003). These statements summarize conclusions about complex statistical issues regarding the measurement of crime and identify two important interrelated issues in the enumeration. The conceptual problem of deciding whether a crime has been committed is the first. The person making this decision and the criteria used will affect the events classified as crimes and ultimately determine the volume and nature of the officially recognized crime. The second issue involves the development of an accurate data-gathering process for detecting, communicating, classifying, and recording offences. How effectively the system filters out incidents that are not illegal but records all serious crimes that take place determines the accuracy of the statistics. Ideally, we would like a system that identifies all “true” crimes but ignores all noncrimes (Fattah & Ezzat 1986).

The media always associates victims with bloody scenes of crimes and deaths. thus, the important point is that victims of violent crimes are seldom injured. In only 1 out of every 12 violent personal crimes is hospital treatment required. Of those who must go to the hospital, the vast majority are treated in the emergency room and released. Only 1 victim out of every 100 requires inpatient care (Johnson 2006). So even if you have the misfortune of being the victim of a violent crime, it is not likely that you will be seriously hurt. What we fear most–suffering a serious physical injury at the hands of an unknown violent offender–is exceedingly uncommon.

Since less than 2 per cent of violent victimizations by strangers result in inpatient hospital care, only 3 people in every 10,000 suffer this most feared event each year (Johnson 2006). Compared with murder, 4 people are seriously injured by an unknown assailant for every 1 murdered; still, this remains an extremely rare event, compared with other forms of accidental injury (Johnson 2006). A final point worth noting about the threat of violent crime is that the chances of being seriously injured are greater if a victim knows his/her assailant (Grabe & Drew, 2007). Robbery and assault victims are more likely to require hospital care if they know the assailant. This is particularly true for the crime of aggravated assault and is more pronounced for women than for men. Furthermore, people attacked by someone they know are likely to be more seriously injured than those attacked by strangers. So, violence does occur, and innocent people are seriously injured, but such incidents are relatively infrequent, and cases in which actual injury is sustained are even rarer. Most crimes are not violent, and most victims suffer no physical injury (Lurigio & Skogan 1990).

Modern media underlines that victims under the present criminal justice system bear an unrelieved burden. The perpetrator may be punished most severely, but the victim is left with his or her losses intact. When it administers its punishments, the state does nothing to address the loss to person or property occasioned by the crime. Furthermore, to the extent that crime reflects social alienation, restitution provides reintegrative opportunities (Johnson 2006). It may have the effect of reconciling offenders with their victims as well as putting offenders in a better light with society at large. It may also help to develop a sense of responsibility and self-worth in offenders who at present often perceive themselves as the helpless victims of forces beyond their control (Katz & White 1993).

In sum, the media popularizes and portrays false and negative images of victims as injured and helpless creatures deprived of the support of police and the state. The attitudes of peer groups, families, and perhaps even neighbours are more influential on behaviour. People do not want to embarrass themselves or disappoint those they respect. But to consider that they might get caught or even that they might be doing something wrong is too far removed from their self-perception to influence. Viewers perceive victims as suffers and unfortunate categories unable to protect themselves and their families. Formal controls are too far removed from the meaningful aspects of everyday life to influence our behaviour directly.

Bibliography

Anastasio, P.A., Costa, D.M. 2004, Twice Hurt: How Newspaper Coverage May Reduce Empathy and Engender Blame for Female Victims of Crime. Sex Roles: A Journal of Research, 51(1), p. 535.

Buckingham, Judith I. 2004, ‘Newsmaking’ criminology or ‘infotainment’ criminology?, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology 37(2): pp. 253 – 275.

Diefenbach, D. L. West, M.D. 2001, Violent Crime and Poisson Regression: A Measure and a Method for Cultivation Analysis. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 45 (2), p. 432.

Fattah, Ezzat (ed) 1986, From crime policy to victim policy. London: MacMillan.

Grabe, M.E., Drew, D.G. 2007, Crime Cultivation: Comparisons across Media Genres and Channels. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 51 (1), p. 147.

Johnson, G., 2006, Van ness, D.W. Handbook Of Restorative Justice. Willan Publishing (UK).

Katz, J.E., White, G.F. 1993, Engaging the Media: A Case Study of the Politics of Crime and the Media. Social Justice, 20 (3-4), p. 57.

McCulloch, Jude. 1997, ‘Behind the headlines: How does the media portray fatal shootings by police?’ Alternative Law Journal, 22 (3), pp. 133-137.

Leishman, F. Mason, P. 2003, Policing and the Media: Facts, Fictions and Factions (Policing and Society Series). Willan Publishing (UK).

Lurigio, A.J., Skogan, W.G., Carl, R. 1990, Victims of Crime: Problems, Policies, and Programs. Sage Publications, Inc.

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Media Portrayal of a Victim

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