Familiarity and Fear

Abstract

Research into historic media coverage of child-homicide cases in New Zealand between 1870 and 1930 reveals that giving prominence to the murderer, rather than the victim, was a long-standing and consistent newsroom practice. Across the six decades, the names of the accused were published three times as frequently as the names of the victims. The research further reveals that legislative changes restricting the media’s power to report name details of accused persons had no discernible effect on how frequently accused child killers were named in the period. However, particular factors such as the murderer’s relationship to the victim, the murderer’s gender, and the salaciousness of the crime, appear to have had some impact on the media’s decisions to name those involved.

KEYWORDS:

• Crime reporting
• child killing
• homicide
• naming patterns
• news media

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Wood and Knepper, “Crime Stories”, 345.

2 Sacco, “Media Constructions of Crime”, 141.

3 Gruenewald, Pizarro & Chermak, Race, Gender, and Newsworthiness; Katz, “What Makes Crime News?”; Rowbotham, Stevenson and Pegg, Crime News.

4 Gekoski. Gray & Adler, “What Makes a Homicide”; Pritchard & Hughes, “Patterns of Deviance”; Reiner, Livingston & Adler, “No More Happy Endings?”

5 Chermak, “Predicting Crime Story Salience”; Lundman, “Newsworthiness and Selection Bias”.

6 Gekoski, Gray & Adler, “What Makes a Homicide”; Peelo et al, “Newspaper Reporting”; Pritchard & Hughes, “Patterns of Deviance”.

7 Buckler & Travis, “Assessing the Newsworthiness”; Gruenewald, Pizarro & Chermak, Race, Gender, and Newsworthiness; Johnstone, Hawkins & Michener, “Homicide Reporting”; Lundman, “Newsworthiness and Selection Bias”.

8 Gruenewald, Pizarro & Chermak, Race, Gender, and Newsworthiness.

9 Coleman, “Incorrigible Offenders”; Shapiro, Breaking the Codes.

10 Greer, “News Media Victims”; Pritchard & Hughes, “Patterns of Deviance”; Sorenson, Manz & Berk, “News Media Coverage.”

11 Gruenewald, Pizarro & Chermak, Race, Gender, and Newsworthiness.

12 Gekoski. Gray & Adler, “What Makes a Homicide”.

13 Soothill et al, “Homicide and the Media”.

14 Chermak, “Predicting Crime Story Salience”; Greer, “News Media Victims”; Pritchard & Hughes, “Patterns of Deviance”; Sorenson, Manz & Berk, “News Media Coverage.”

15 Danson & Soothill, “Child Murder”.

16 Wykes, News, Crime and Culture.

17 Chermak, Victims in the News.

18 Statistics NZ a; Statistics NZ b.

19 “A flaw in the law”, 6.

20 Offenders Probation Act 1920, s20.

21 “Local and General”, 6.

22 Dahmen et al, “Covering Mass Shootings”; Johnston & Joy, “Mass Shootings”; Towers et al, “Contagion in Mass Killings”.

23 Lankford, “Fame-seeking Rampage Shooters”; Pane, “Should Media Avoid”; Zarembo, “Are the Media Complicit”.

24 Hardy & Gunn, “Information Provision”; McKenna, Thom & Simpson, “Media Coverage of Homicide”.

25 Coleman, “Incorrigible Offenders”; Powell, The Ogress.

26 Tyler, Killing Innocents.

27 Wardle, “It Could Happen”.

28 Flaounas et al, “Research Methods”; Wijfjes, “Digital Humanities”.

29 Galtung & Ruge, “The Structure”.

30 Gilchrist, “Newsworthy Victims?”

31 We have excluded from inclusion the only case in the decade between 1900 and 1910, that of the hotel arson and associated homicides, which was anomalous as there were doubts about Minns’ involvement and the news coverage deviated to many other topics such as hotel fire safety.

32 See n.17

33 Pane, “Should Media Avoid”; Zarembo, “Are the Media Complicit”.

34 Eisner, “Long-Term Historical Trends”, 121.

35 Lundman, “Newsworthiness and Selection Bias”; Soothill et al., “Homicide and the Media”.

36 Powell, The Ogress.

37 Coleman, “Incorrigible Offenders”.

38 Wykes, News, Crime and Culture.

39 Mr A. C. Hanlon, 2.

40 Gruenewald, Pizarro & Chermak, “Race, gender”.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Francine Tyler

Francine Tyler, Independent Scholar, Wellington, New Zealand

F. Elizabeth Gray

F. Elizabeth Gray (author to whom correspondence should be addressed), Massey Business School, Massey University, New Zealand; Email: [email protected]. 0000-0002-0612-3795

Catherine Strong

Catherine Strong, Independent Scholar, Wellington, New Zealand