Media Portrayal of Criminal Offenders and Its Consequences

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine if criminal offenders are portrayed in the media with any significant degree of bias in regard to their demographics (race, gender, age, etc.) and if so, what the implications are for policymakers and for society in general. The findings indicate that there is indeed a significant degree of bias in such portrayal and that due to the power and ubiquitous nature of mass media, such bias can affect the outcomes of criminal trials, the patterns of prosecution and sentencing, and the behavior of law enforcement personnel. While the mass media, for the most part, strive to be unbiased and impartial and indeed are much more so than in the past, biases do creep in, especially unintentional ones. The sensationalistic nature of much mass media reportage affects the fairness and the outcome of criminal trials, particularly in the specific case of the racial tension in the O.J. Simpson murder trial. This study also examines the possibility of bias in favor of female criminal offenders. There could be a profound impact on the public policy due to these biased portrayals, in that consumers of the media will to some extent absorb these biases and use them as a basis for petitioning their elected leaders to enact or fail to enact certain laws. There is still hope for objectivity, though, as media bias frequently elicits public outcries. The public does have a healthy respect for the sanctity and objectivity of the justice system.

Media Portrayal of Criminal Offenders and Its Consequences

The central idea behind our justice system is that it should be fair and impartial. Unfortunately, it is administered by human beings, who at times can be anything but unbiased. The justice system also strives to insulate itself from the outside world, in that trials are often changed in venue because the judge deems it impossible to impanel an impartial jury; media access to courtrooms during trials is severely controlled (for example, no photography is allowed), and juries are sequestered during the trial and their subsequent deliberations. This insulation is less effective than it might otherwise be, though, because of the ubiquitous nature of the media and the near-impossibility of finding jurors who are unaware of a high-profile case.

The various mass media also have a stated goal of being fair and impartial, and of reporting the facts without bias or prejudice. Unfortunately, they often fall far short of this goal. The urge to sell more newspapers or magazines, or to acquire more market share in a broadcast media market, often overcomes fairness and objectivity: the media gives the public what they want. The “tabloids” are infamous for this kind of pandering, but the more “mainstream” and “legitimate” media do it, too. Surette (1999) examined the relationship between popular media and the portrayal of criminals and found that “people use the knowledge they obtain from the media to build their own picture of the world and to base their actions on their socially constructed images of reality” (Surette, 3). This has obvious consequences for the impartiality of the justice system. The first problem is that of media-created bias on the part of judges, prosecutors, and juries; the second problem is the same bias influencing public opinion and the public’s acceptance of controversial verdicts, which in turn influences public perception of the reliability of the justice system.

It is interesting to examine the media’s influence on one of the most high-profile criminal cases of the last few decades: the O.J. Simpson murder trial. O.J. Simpson was a famous and even beloved former football star who was accused of brutally murdering his wife and a male friend of hers. The trial at times deteriorated into farce, with the massive evidence implicating Simpson taking a back seat to little rhyming demonstrations by his attorney, Johnny Cochran. Though the trial lasted almost a year, the jury returned a verdict of “not guilty” after only four hours’ deliberation. That jury was comprised of 9 blacks, 1 Hispanic, and two whites: ten women and two men. Brown, Duane, and Frasier (1997) polled the public after the verdict and found that “Those with a strong belief in the fairness of the United States justice system more strongly supported unrestricted media coverage of the trial. Anglo Americans more than African Americans believed Simpson's lawyers used the media effectively for their advantage” (Brown et al., 261). There is little doubt that Simpson was actually guilty (a later civil wrongful death suit filed by the father of the murdered man resulted in a verdict against Simpson and a judgment of forty million dollars against him), but the public opinion of the verdict was sharply split along racial lines.

One crucial element affecting the trial’s outcome was the historical nature of the outcomes of trials involving blacks accused of violent crimes against whites, particularly in the South. For decades, ranging from the postbellum period up to and including the 1960s civil rights era, such trials were often little more than for show, with the accused being automatically found guilty, usually by an all-white jury. Thus, in the Simpson case, the media had an obligation to present its coverage in an unbiased fashion. It failed miserably in at least one respect: the depiction of Simpson on the covers of both “Time” and “Newsweek” was of a scowling, menacing thug. In each case, the images had been altered to make Simpson appear darker and more threatening. Morrison (2010) noted that this kind of “already guilty” portrayal drove blacks and whites in polar opposite directions regarding Simpson: “It may have been this early gigantism that made Mr. Simpson’s guilt increasingly remote to some African Americans” (Morrison, 15). In other words, the stereotypical portrayal of Simpson as a violent and dangerous thug, African-Americans felt, would not have been necessary unless Simpson was being “railroaded.” Whites, on the other hand, felt that the jury selection (drawing the pool from heavily African-American central Los Angeles) was a way to guarantee the outcome in Simpson’s favor.

The implications here are clear. No matter which opinion a person may have held (that Simpson was obviously guilty and was acquitted due to manipulation of the process, or that Simpson was being falsely accused and thus, justice was served by the verdict), that opinion was likely to have been forged by the media portrayals of Simpson and the trial, pre-existing mindsets regarding the justice system and African-Americans, and selective perceptions. Very little—astonishingly little—attention was paid to the actual, overwhelming evidence pointing to Simpson’s guilt. The verdict was seen by both whites and blacks as some kind of referendum on race relations rather than a true appraisal of Simpson’s guilt or innocence. When the media frame a high-profile trial in this way, justice takes a back seat to an agenda, and the result is a massive loss of confidence in the judicial system.

In general, media portrayals of criminals are more often than not negative. While it is to be expected that society as a whole would have a negative view of crime and criminals, unfavorable portrayals in the media can influence criminal justice and the treatment of convicted criminals. Barlow, Barlow, and Chiracos (1995) discussed how the portrayal of criminals in the media had led to a constructed ideology regarding crime and the motivations for it; that criminals were inherently different, or flawed, compared to law-abiding citizens. They noted that “Of statements portraying a general image of offenders, 54% portrayed them in a negative light” (Barlow et al., 5) and that “News about crime is ideological” (Barlow et al., 1). This has obvious implications for the objectivity of the criminal justice system, in that it is difficult for justice to be “blind” as it is supposed to be. Furthermore, if media portrayals have a disproportionate impact, the race, age, or gender of an accused offender will come into play when they actually should have no bearing in a supposedly impartial system.

The gender of both victims and the accused skews public perception of criminal trials and punishments. It also is a factor in how the system treats both accused and convicted offenders. Horn and Wincup noted these disparities: “Police officers do not see women as ‘natural’ criminals in the way they do men, but as being basically ‘good’ women who have offended due to circumstances” (Horn & Wincup, 17). This dichotomy in the perception of the “why” of crime smacks of the fundamental attribution error: police see men who offend as inherently bad people, but they consider circumstances and context in the case of female offenders. Obviously, circumstances and context matter in the case of virtually every offender, in that neither male nor female criminals are irredeemably evil comic-book villains. Police officers’ erroneous snap judgments, therefore, can lead to an overly harsh treatment of male offenders and the overly lenient treatment of female offenders. Obviously, the goal of society should be to treat offenders in a gender-neutral fashion, but the reality falls far short of that goal.

The construction of an impartial and fair criminal justice system in the U.S. is based on a Constitutional framework, but that is only a starting point. The system can be and has been modified many times to suit the political mood of the times. The public elects legislators who will conform to this current mood, and many decisions regarding the proper way to administer criminal justice are thus ideologically driven. The American judicial system is built on one principle above all: the presumption of innocence and the consequent burden upon the state to prove the guilt of the accused. Crucially, this means that an informal verdict of “He’s probably guilty” is not enough: to return briefly to the subject, a few of the O.J. Simpson jurors, when interviewed after the trial was over, said that they felt that Simpson was probably guilty but that the state had not proved its case. One wonders, however, if those jurors had perceived that the case “had already been tried in the media” and that their mission, therefore, was to reverse the guilty verdict that the media had already rendered. This is disturbing, in that the actual trial was glossed over in the minds of the public and those jurors.

Public policy in a free and pluralistic society should be directed at “leveling the playing field” for those who wield less power in society than others. Universal suffrage is one major aspect of the fulfillment of that goal. In criminal justice, the right of the accused to be tried by a jury of his peers is paramount in this regard. Yet, it seems that particularly in high-profile cases, the actual trial takes place in the media and the courtroom trial is merely a pro forma exercise. Certainly, the rendering of a surprising verdict validates this conclusion in the minds of many. However, actual verdicts going strongly against media “verdicts” can and do occur, as in the racially charged Zimmerman trial regarding the case of Trayvon Martin. Objectivity is harmed but not necessarily destroyed by the mass media portrayal of accused criminals.

The best remedy for any lack of objectivity is for judges to maintain strict control of courtrooms and be vigilant for any factors that may unduly influence a jury. Additionally, the public should decry rather than indulge in the sensationalistic reportage of criminal trials. In particular, biased portrayals such as that of O.J. Simpson on the 1994 Time and Newsweek magazine covers should elicit public outcries (as indeed they did). There should be a general effort to leave the trial to the judge and jurors and to bend over backward to avoid subverting it beforehand in the media and/or the marketplace of public opinion.

Annotated Bibliography

Barlow, M. H., Barlow, D. E., & Chiricos, T. G. (1995). Economic conditions and ideologies of crime in the media: A content analysis of crime news. Crime & delinquency, 41(1), 3-19.

The authors critically examine media portrayals of both accused and convicted criminal offenders and find that significant bias exists in a majority of such portrayals. Examining, in particular, the portrayals of crime and criminals in Time magazine since WWII, the authors find that an alternate version of reality—an “ideological construct”—pervaded the reportage of crime in this specific medium.

Brown, W. J., Duane, J. J., & Fraser, B. P. (1997). Media coverage and public opinion of the OJ Simpson trial: Implications for the criminal justice system. Communication Law and Policy, 2(2), 261-287.

The authors examine the extremely significant role of the media in the O.J. Simpson trial and the implications the effects of the coverage of the trial have on the criminal justice system. This work discusses not only the result of the trial itself but also the resultant effects on public opinion and confidence in the criminal justice system. In particular, the makeup of the jury and consequent public perceptions of fairness or unfairness are examined.

Horn, R., & Wincup, E. (1995). Not real criminals. Criminal Justice Matters, 19(1), 17-19.

The authors examine the perception and the treatment of female criminal offenders and find that there is a significant bias in favor of females, in that they are treated differently by law enforcement and upon conviction and incarceration, are viewed with higher expectations than are male inmates. The authors note that the perceived attribution for criminal behavior differs greatly in the cases of female and male offenders.

Morrison, T. (2010). Birth of a nation'hood: Gaze, script, and spectacle in the OJ Simpson case. Random House LLC.

Morrison examines the impact of the media in the O.J. Simpson murder trial and is sharply critical of the influence that the portrayal of Simpson had on the trial’s outcome. In particular, the author discusses how the media circus preceding and during the trial made the trial itself secondary in the minds of the public in terms of determining Simpson’s guilt or innocence: blacks saw it as a railroading of yet another black man accused of harming a white woman, while whites saw it as an orchestrated farce in front of a jury that had its mind made up before the trial even started.

Surette, R. (1998). Media, crime, and criminal justice: Images and realities. Belmont, CA: West/Wadsworth.

This work examines the link between media portrayals of criminals and the resultant “constructed reality” that appears in the minds of viewers and listeners. The author acknowledges the significant effects of media portrayals on society at large and on the outcomes of criminal trials in particular. The various misconceptions regarding the role and influence of the media are also examined. The author’s thesis is that there is a significant disconnect between the constructed media reality regarding criminal justice and actual reality. Surette also explores the disproportionate impact of imagery on the public’s perception of criminals and criminal justice and gives examples of how visual portrayals have profoundly affected the course of criminal justice in the past.