ABSTRACT
Many scholars have considered this question of crime reporting from both criminological and media studies perspectives (Chibnall 1977; Ericson et al. 1987, 1989, 1991; Reiner et al. 2003; Schlesinger and Tumber 1994) and confirm the difficulty of assessing with any degree of confidence the relative ‘amount’ of crime news in the press. A meta-analysis of 36 studies concluded that between 1.6 per cent and 33.5 per cent of newspaper reporting included the coverage of crime news (Marsh 1991, p.73). This vast difference in percentages is understandable, although frustrating, given the bewildering array of methodologies, sampling techniques, definitions of crime, types of newspaper, and geographical locations. Despite these difficulties, a consensus remains that in western nations (where the vast majority of this research has been undertaken) significant proportions of daily newspapers carry stories related to crime (Reiner 2002).
