ABSTRACT
Setting out to write a chapter about crime and media in Europe is a daunting and possibly foolhardy mission. If we take the medium of greatest penetration alone, there are an estimated 8,600 TV channels available in Europe, with the UK leading the way (1,033 as compared with, for example, 227 in Germany and 195 in Spain [https://www.international-television.org" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">https://www.international-television.org/tv_market_data/tv-channels-in-europe.html]). In all countries’ TV schedules, crime is well-represented, and old-fashioned favourites such as Inspector Morse (a quintessentially English production shown in 200 countries) jostle for audience share with grisly True Crime documentaries, gritty cop shows, forensic science dramas and inside exposés from American penitentiaries. Given the abundance of potential material to write about and the limitations of having to do it within a strict word limit, our more modest aim in this chapter is to focus on news media, and to provide an overview of the ways in which some crimes are reported in some media in three different European countries: the UK, Norway and Italy. 1
