ABSTRACT
On the 24th April 2006 the then Home Secretary Charles Clarke delivered a much publicised lecture at the LSE on 'The Media and Civil Liberties'. This chapter addresses the question of whether this has changed over time, and if so, how? It reports some results of a historical content analysis of cinema crime films and news stories about crime (Allen et al. 1997, 1998; Reiner et al. 2000, 2001, 2003). There is also a long-standing liberal/radical concern about media representations of crime. In this view the media exaggerate and distort the threat of crime, thus bolstering fear and stimulating public support for authoritarian solutions. There is a huge volume of research seeking to measure the 'effects' of media representations of crime. The pattern of media representation of crime can only be explained to a limited extent as a direct reflection of the ideologies of media owners, producers or reporters.
