ABSTRACT

In considering the general issue of news construction and crime, one should be aware that there are general problems related to the construction of news. News accounts of reality are always subject to distortions generated by a number of "structural" and "human" factors (see Breed, 1955, 1958; Tuchman, 1978; Gans, 1979; Bridges, 1989; Hardt, 1990). The structural factors have to do with such factors as the technological base (Levy, 1974) and the "invisible" hand of the market (Greenberg, Sacksman, Sandman and Salamone, 1989). The human factors have to do with the behavior or policies of interests or individuals who act to create a news agenda (see Stevens, 1990), or else censor this agenda (see Evans and Lundman, 1983). The construction of news involves a complicated interaction between the social producers of news and the objective external reality (Hartley, 1982; Manoff and Schudson, 1987).