ABSTRACT
Twenty years ago next year, in a Justice Quarterly article, using the insights of Stan Cohen, Jock Young, Stuart Hall, Tony Jefferson and others, and in accordance with a Gramscian approach to hegemony and class struggle, I introduced the concept and practice of 'newsmaking criminology' (Barak, 1988). This referred to the processes whereby criminologists use mass communication for the purposes of interpreting, informing and altering the images of crime and justice, crime and punishment, and criminals and victims (Barak, 2001: 190). More specifically, newsmaking criminology refers to the conscious efforts and activities of criminologists to interpret, influence
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or shape the representation of 'newsworthy' items about crime and justice. Furthermore, a newsmaking criminology attempts to demystify images of crime and punishment by locating the mass-media portrayals of incidences of 'serious' crimes in the context of all illegal and harmful activities. It strives to affect public attitudes, thoughts and discourses about crime and justice so as to facilitate a public policy of 'crime control' based on structural and historical analyses of institutional development; allows criminologists to come forth with their knowledge and to establish themselves as credible voices in the mass-mediated arena of policy formation; and asks of criminologists that they develop popularly based languages and technically based skills of communication for the purposes of participating in the massconsumed ideology of crime and justice (Barak, 1988: 566).
