Stabbing News: Articulating crime statistics in the newsroom

Jairo Lugo-Ocando*, Renata Faria Brandão

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

20 Scopus citations

Abstract

There is a comprehensive body of scholarly work regarding the way media represent crime and how it is constructed in the media narrative as a news item. These works have often suggested that in many cases public anxieties in relation to crime levels are not justified by actual data. However, few works have examined the gathering and dissemination of crime statistics by non-specialist journalists and the way crime statistics are gathered and used in the newsroom. This article seeks to explore in a comparative manner how journalists in newsrooms access and interpret quantitative data when producing stories related to crime. In so doing, the article highlights the problems and limitations of journalists in dealing with crime statistics as a news source, while assessing statistics-related methodologies and skills used in the newsrooms across the United Kingdom when producing stories related to urban crime.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)715-729
Number of pages15
JournalJournalism Practice
Volume10
Issue number6
DOIs
StatePublished - Aug 17 2016

Keywords

  • crime statistics
  • journalism
  • media
  • news
  • objectivity
  • policy

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Communication

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