The Effects of Crime News

Introduction

Crime news is one of the most frequent topics in which the public is interested. Actually, crime might lurk in everyone’s life. From a murder in a certain region to a threat of the terrorism, crime is critically relative in each person’s security. For example, Istanbul Ataturk airport has been attacked by the terrorism, over 40 people killed in explosions in June 2016. Audiences learn about crime news largely coming from the media. Media, particularly in terms of television and newspapers, would influence audiences’ judgements, feelings, impressions, and opinions about crime. According to Fetnon (1910, cited in Lampoltshammer et al, 2014), he argues that human habits are consciously and unconsciously acquired when people grow up and are impacted through many other factors such as newspapers. Crime news might affect the public. The purpose of this review is to answer following questions:

• What kind of emotion will be expressed when people know about the crime news?

• What behaviours will be presented when people hear about a crime news?

• How deep impact of the media on crime news coverage among the public?

Literature Review

It has been known that the TV programs and film would influence people’s psychological health. It tends to affect people’s mood directly, whilst the mood could lead people’s thoughts and behaviours. A significant number of bad things like war, violence, crime, injustice and political unrest happens all around the world, and lots of them have been known by news bulletins. When the media transmits crime news coverage, it could cause people generating negative emotion such as anxiety, disgust, anger and sadness. That also even can affect people to worry about their own lives. Graham, who is an expert in anxiety and a professor of psychology at the University of Sussex, investigates the psychological effects of watching negative news items with his colleagues in1997. He points out that those people who watched the negative news coverage all reporting critically sadder and more anxious after watching this bulletin than those who viewing positive news or neutral news coverage (Wendy and Graham, 1997, cited in Graham, 2012). Graham also mentions that the proportion of negative emotion in news coverage was increasing. This can connect with the news stories which are emotionalized to emphasise potential negative outcomes and risks. Graham calls this kinds of news as scaremongering. The media especially TV almost post 24-hour news coverage by satellite, it leads to the public momentarily watching the news what was happening throughout the world. The journalists seem like to play roles which are simply to impartially describe the fact of the news. Their jobs become to evaluate the news stories. However, it will be a small but important step from evaluating news stories to sensationalizing them. Franklin who is a professor of journalism studies, says “Entertainment has superseded the provision of information; human interest has supplanted the public interest; measured judgement has succumbed to sensationalism.” (Franklin, 1997, cited in Graham, 2012). The media started trying to please the public, increasing the proportion of emotional description, even exaggerating the facts in order to get more attention. This phenomenon can be summarized that the media is more interested in its own profits rather than the accuracy and impartiality of the news. Nevertheless, the media might ignore the effects when people watching negative news especially crime news. According to Graham and his colleagues’ structured interview, they found that people would spend more time on thinking and talking about their worries after they watching negative news. They were likely to catastrophize their worries. It considerably impacts people’s life. Catastrophizing might contribute people to a long time persistent worrying and extreme behaviours. For example, the news of Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster cause lots of Chinese people buying numbers of edible salts for resistance to nuclear radiation. So the public is likely to have complex emotions not only by bad news broadcasts but also by their personal anxieties and worries after knowing about negative news.

In fact, emotions are generated by the person who experienced in different situations (Ortony, Clore, and Collins, 1988, cited in Huma, 2015). Regarding news content, Huma discusses that people’s memory for negative news will be more clear than their memory for positive or neutral news. She also presents that a bulk of studies notes the human brain responding automatically to negatively compelling stimulation. This is particularly caused by TV news. From a biological perception, irresistible images which are negative could efficiently arouse emotional stimulus among viewers, it can lead them to facing dangers immediately. From a cognitive psychological perception, the emotional stimulus motivated by negatively compelling arousal could generate cognition without people’s consciousness of processing the information (Huma, 2015). In addition, based on the study of Newhagen and Reeves’s study, it shows that the viewers when watch negatively compelling images in TV news will have impressive memory about that news, and this is relative to the competence of viewers’ retaining and processing new messages (Newhagen and Reeves, 1992, cited in Huma, 2015). As Graham’s analysis, people will express anxiety, sadness, and anger when they view bad news. Additionally, Newhagen concludes three primary emotional images which are anger, fear, and disgust in bad news. He demonstrates that anger-evoking images achieve the highest approach scores in negative news then fear-evoking images. It means the first expression when people watch a bad news particularly crime news is anger. For instance, a crime news about a Chinese international student, who named Mengmei Leng was murdered by her uncle, influence most of Chinese international students feeling anger. Her death evoked a wave of discussion. Although people will produce the emotion by themselves when they watch crime news, the media plays an essential role of the emotion processing. It also can be regarded as the source and guider of viewers’ emotions. There is an example of Black people like African-Americans who are always connected with perpetrators of violence. Black perpetrators are affirmed as more threatening than white perpetrators. Gilliam and Iyengar (1999, cited in Huma, 2015) argue that it is a “crime scrip” formed by a phenomenon: crime is created by the perpetrators who are black. The scrip repeatedly emerges to the public. Black equals crime, the thought is indoctrinated to the audiences gradually by the media.