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Created: July 27, 2003
Latest Update: February 17, 2005
jeannecurran@habermas.org
takata@uwp.edu

CRMJ 385: Media, Crime, and Criminal Justice

You will be held accountable for purposes of grading for the readings and exercises listed here. There will be no "testing." That means that you will not have to live in anxious anticipation of what we will ask and how much you will have to know. Instead, we will provide weekly discussion questions, lectures, essays, and concepts we feel that you should know as a result of having taken this course. You will assure us of that learning and receive your grade for the questions and concepts about which you choose to write and talk with us. In addition you will find detailed explanations and examples on our grading policies in the first week's reading.

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Week 6: Week of February 20, 2005

Topic: The News Media

Special Announcement:

No office hours on Monday, February 21st.

Sign up sheets for mandatory midterm meeting will be available in class. Meetings will be conducted from February 25th through March 7th.

Preparatory Readings & Other Materials:

• Surrette. Media, Crime, and Criminal Justice. -- Chapter 3.
• Potter and Kappeler. Constructing Crime -- Chapter 12-15.
• Merlo and Benekos. What's Wrong with the Criminal Justice System? -- Chapter __
• Documentaries: "The New's Media Coverage of Crime and Victimization", child abduction segment, and "Outfoxed" segment.

Lecture related links:



• Check out this link -- Ray Surette's website
• W.I. Thomas' concept definition of the situation
• Metaphor and Theory. Read the Blind Men and the Elephant fable. Think about how this fable relates to the course.
• Martha Minow. Making All the Difference: Exclusion, Inclusion and American Law. Check out this link Martha Minow on the Dear Habermas site.
  
  

Concepts to be covered:

• standard reporting style
• newsworthiness
• info-tainment
• episodic and thematic news
• reality programming
• unintended consequences



Discussion Questions:

Note: Incorporate into your answers the documentaries viewed in class.

1. How realistic do you feel crime-and-justice news is? (Surette: 84)?

2. How would you change the news coverage of crime and justice? Could you still turn a profit with these changes? Why. (Surette:84)

3. Discuss the pros and cons of the news media becoming evidence gatherers in criminal proceedings such as in the O.J. Simpson case, where they developed leads, found and interviewed witnesses, and searched for evidence. (Surette: 84)

4. In chapters 12-15 in Potter and Kappeler, what are the positive and negative effects of constructing crime? Why.

Suggested Activities:



• Compare and contrast both the front stage and back stage of the news media. Find out how news is "made" by talking to someone in the journalism profession.
• Compare and contrast several different news broadcasts (local and/or national). What are some of the similarities and differences? Why.
• Watch an "info-tainment" program that relates to crime and justice. Describe what it was about. Explain how it relates to this week's readings. Why.
  
  
• Note: Creative measures must: 1) focus on "media, crime, and criminal justice." 2) Must be pre-approved. 3) Cannot be something that you are doing for another course. 4) Research cannot be 100% online (i.e., google, askjeeves). Must conduct library research using scholarly works.



Recommended Readings:



• Edward J. Gerald. News of Crime: Courts and Press in Conflict.
• Nicholas Cowdery. Getting Justice Wrong: Myths, Media and Crime. recommended by Stephen Bedwell.
• Marshall McLuhan. The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects.
• David Kidd-Hewitt and Richard Osborne. Crime and the Media.
• Sheila Brown. Crime and Law in Media Culture.
  
  
• Lawrence Lessig. Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity. Lawrence Lessig, a law professor at Stanford University, has made his book free online.
• Herbert Schiller. Information Inequality.

Course Syllabus




Media Sources:

Left/Right Perspectives - Cursor - New York Times
Arts and Letters Daily - The Economist - The Guardian
Wall Street Journal -The Weekly Standard - The Nation
Los Angeles Times - Chicago Tribune - The Washington Post
Cursor's Al Jazeera Archive - Ha'aretz - Palestine Monitor


Indymedia - BBC News - New Profile - Progressive Sociologists Network




takata@uwp.edu

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