ABSTRACT
Whatever the social scientific reality of the police role in social conflict, both political institutions and mass media have recurrent needs to present the ‘reality’ in certain ways to achieve instrumental, ideological and rhetorical ends. Recognising this, the police have increasingly sought to control their image in the media. Many observers have remarked on the moves to take the public platform on the part of senior officers that emerged in the 1970s and from which police have never looked back (Reiner, 2003).
