Crime News, Trial by Media and Scandal Hunting

A rapidly evolving digital media landscape, inhabited by a network of outlets, is amplifying crime consciousness, exploiting crime’s infotainment potential, and reshaping public attitudes towards crime and criminal justice. At the same time, in depth analysis of crime news has dropped off the criminological radar. In this chapter, we argue that because criminologists have not kept pace with transforming news media and markets, crime news remains under-researched and under-conceptualized. We begin by revisiting three classic concepts that continue to dominate crime news research: newsworthiness, moral panic, and penal populism. Though these concepts are still important for understanding crime news, their institutionalization and taxonomical application within criminology has marginalized analysis of dramatic shifts in the production and nature of crime news, the markets in which it circulates, and its power to shape crime consciousness and criminal justice rhetoric and practice. We then explore how ‘trial by media’ and ‘scandal hunting’ are not only redefining crime news, but also exposing institutional failures in public protection and challenging both the efficacy and the legitimacy of the criminal justice system. It is in this context of an unruly networked digital environment that we situate the disruptive challenge posed to criminal justice by the rise of what we define as media justice.