News Media Analysis

News Media Analysis

Name

Institution

News Media Analysis

From week One to week Three, I have observed that the media, both print and digital media, covers a wide range of crime stories that occur in the society almost on a daily basis. Although a large percentage of these crime stories are often found on the front pages of local newspapers or as leading stories in digital media and television news, some of them normally appear on the latter sessions of the media sources. Many people today use the media to obtain information about local news about daily happenings. According to Kelly (2011), there are more media sources that citizens can use to get information in today’s society than there used to be several years back. Moreover, the number of time that people spend reviewing alternative news resources has increased because people often try to analyze the issues presented in order to generate relevant information from them.

Crime is one of the social issues that have been influenced, either positively or negatively, by various media outlets. Media outlets have positively influenced crime in the sense that, they present information that has greatly helped the criminal justice system to control crime. Conversely, the media has negatively influenced crime in the sense that, it sometimes provide information that assist criminals to easily execute their criminal acts. One thing that the society must agree is the fact that the media has become a very good source of information for policy-makers across different sectors of the society (McCombs, 2014).

The media has played a big role in influencing policy formulation and implementation within the criminal justice system (McCombs, 2014). For instance, the media, to a large extent, influences the criminal justice policy process in community and state courts. A wide range of crime-related news that are found in local news talks about how different types of crimes are executed by providing details of strategies that criminal apply to attack their victims. Such news help policy makers to understand how criminals succeed in harming their victims and the nature of environments that they use as hiding places after committing crime. The government can use this information to formulate policies that will assist the criminal justice system to trace and apprehend criminals, either before or after they can execute a serious crime. Furthermore, information that is available in local news sources can be used by policy makers to design forms of punishment that are appropriate for different types of criminals depending on the nature of crimes they commit (McCombs, 2014).

A good example of how the media influences the criminal justice policy process is the way local news stories affect crime control policies of the police units serving my community. Being a remote area, very few people, including the police, are in possession of televisions. For this reason, they largely depend on local news stories that are aired over the radio and those on print media such as the newspaper. News stories that are told over the radio and those that are written on local newspapers always give details of crimes committed, including the criminals, the victims, area or region where the crimes took place, as well as the time when they were executed. Police officers in my community often rely on these news stories to formulate policies that can enable them to control crime in the village. For instance, they can rely on information that is available on news stories to pronounce a curfew in the community. In this respect, they will put in place a policy that restricts movement of community members within a defined period of time, say from 6. p.m in the evening to 5 a.m in the morning. Such a policy, that was formed based on information obtained on local news stories, play a significant role in helping the police officers in the community to control crime (Kelly, 2011).

Based on critical analysis, it is clear that the media plays a big role in influencing criminal justice policy, both in the local community and in the entire state (McCombs, 2014). The media has for a long time succeeded in influencing criminal justice policy because various media sources always choose very sensitive issues that are affecting the lives of many people and presents these issues in a manner that can easily be understood. For instance, crime issues are often very important to people because they directly affect the social lives of citizens. In order to promote social order and to protect the community from harmful activities performed by criminals, policy makers within the criminal justice system rely on information presented in local news stories to formulate important policies (McCombs, 2014).

Although the media plays a significant role in influencing criminal justice policy process, readers must be careful to analyze the information that has been presented to them by print and digital media as some of these news sources are often prone to negative reporting. Prior to utilizing this information in formulation of policy, the criminal justice system must conduct a thorough investigation to verify the validity of the information. Confirming the evidence of information presented in various media outlets will enhance formation and implementation of relevant policies (Kelly, 2011).

References

Kelly, D. M. (2011). The public policy pedagogy of corporate and alternative news media. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 30(2), 185–198.

McCombs, M. (2014). Setting the agenda: The mass media and public opinion (2nd ed.). Malden, MA: Polity Press.