Media and Crime

Name
Professor
Course
Date
The Media, the Public, and Law Enforcement
This paper will address issues on the fairness of media crime coverage and its impact on the relationship between the public and law enforcement. National media rooms and newspapers dedicate roughly 30% of their content to crime and deviance. Because of this, they play a key role in the communities’ agenda setting. In this case, agenda setting is the media’s influence over the issues that the society thinks, talks and generally are affected by.
Is the media coverage of crime unfair? In this new age era where any person with a smartphone can become a news reporter journalistic integrity has gone down. Journalists are seen to be unfair in three ways. The first one is by being outright biased. They do so by covering only the scoop that mostly looks at one person’s side of the story. There is the other element of creating a false balance in order to seem integral. Media houses also cover crime unfairly by only supporting the views of their sponsors and investors. They, therefore, are unable to tell a story that is not signed off by their financiers. An example is in the case of a riot the press only portrays the inhumanity of the police without necessarily looking at the situation they are in CITATION The18 l 1033 (The Media Insight Project).
By only offering the negatives in the police service they have created a gloom-ridden attitude especially among the Hispanic and the African American community. In a study undertaken by FAIR, an agency involved in ensuring media integrity found that only the white community have their confidence in the police increased after watching crime related broadcasts.

The media has created some form of hostility among the public and the police by dehumanizing the force CITATION Val11 l 1033 (Valarie J. Callanan).
As a general review, the media should always maintain high integrity practices to increase public trust. In the same light, people should as well look at the truth and honesty of each item being broadcasted on any media stream. This will help in forming better opinions.
Works Cited
BIBLIOGRAPHY The Media Insight Project. “Levels of trust and how Americans feel about the fairness and accuracy of the press.” American Press Institute (2018): 23-46. Document.
Valarie J. Callanan, Jared S. Rosenberg. “Media and public perceptions of the police: examining the impact of race and personal experience.” Journal of Policing and Society (2011): 98-120. Document.