If it bleads, it leads : A study of crimereporting in the South African print media

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The purpose of the study is to examine weather the South African print media do pictures crime reporting objective. The aim is also to bring fourth if crime reporting is visualized differently in regional newspapers compared to newspapers in metropolitan areas. Two different qualitative methods have been used; in-depth interviews with South African journalists and text analyses of some of their published articles. Theories as the social responsibility ideology and ethical codes, along with theories about crime in the media context are used in the study.The interviews show professional journalists struggling with the task to give a truthful picture of the crime situation in the country. However, crime reporting in South Africa is still covering crime committed against white people in the rich areas, even though crimes against black people in the townships are more commonly reported on to the police. The high amount of violent crime makes the approach quite sensationalistic, because of the high level of news value. The interviewed journalists’ narrative style is corresponding their expressed way of mediate crime and some tend to be more sensational in their style than others. The relationship between the media and the South African police is considered as quite bad. Especially journalists are affected a small city, because of persona...