| Media & Criminal Justice |
In the mid 1990s Andersen began
drawing the connections between what she termed TV’s new “docu-cop” genre to a
critique of street level law enforcement and the War on Drugs. Published as a
major chapter in her first book Consumer Culture and TV Programming,
the analysis was reprinted in a number of different publications. She continues
to analyze the media’s role in influencing public opinion about criminal
justice issues.
By any rational measure, the war on drugs is a failure. Drugs are readily available on the streets, they are pure and they are cheap. Worse, this war leaves, as most wars do, a trail of bodies on a social battlefield of ruined lives, devastated communities and increased economic destruction. Most of the victims of this war do not die; instead they linger in overcrowded prisons, many of which are being privatized in unethical profit-making schemes that should make their stockholders blush.…more
Reality TV and Criminal Injustice, 1994,
Volume 54, No.5. (September/October)
pp. 8-13.
Extra!
The Newsletter of Fairness
and Accuracy in Reporting (F.A.I.R.),
That's Entertainment: How ‘Reality’-Based Crime Shows Market
Police Brutality, 1994, Volume 7, No.3. (May/June) pp. 15-17.
Delineated in this work are “the
interconnections between “reality”-based police shows and the War on Drugs
being carried out in America’s cities. The docu-cop genre proliferated at the
same time the government instituted a drug policy focusing on criminalization
and street level narcotics enforcement in urban communities. Cheap to produce
but deceptive, these TV representations of police activities misrepresent the
nature of drug use and its relationship to crime and violence. Indeed, such
programs have led to a lack of public understanding of drug use and the
connections between urban poverty and the politics of drug prohibition.
Criminal justice issues have been further skewed by the dramatic imagery of the
street-level drug trade. In some instances the policies of the War on Drugs and
their media representations have lead to the curtailment of civil liberties and
to unequal criminal justice practices applied to black and white Americans.
These
police programs appeal to authentic needs but offer false formulations and
resolutions. The new crime programming invokes the public’s need for safety and
security, but it is only when the public participates from an informed perspective
on criminal justice issues that the problems of crime and drug use will be
solved. In the absence of solutions to these problems, the new crimes
programming offers spectacles of fear, punishment, and retribution commodified
as entertainment.
Reality TV and Criminal Injustice, was also
included in the custom anthology for classroom teaching published by Simon and
Schuster titled Exploring Diversity:
Readings in Sociology, David Barnes and Marshall Forman (eds.) 1996.
On the anniversary of the TV program Cops,
in April 1999, celebrating its 400th episode, Andersen was invited
to appear on Fox network’s national newsmagazine, Fox Files. She shared
her critique of the program Cops with a national audience.
America’s
Least Wanted takes a bite out of the media’s crime hysteria by exposing
the sensational and unbalanced strategies of crime reporting. Public opinion on
criminal justice issues is influenced by the media’s emphasis on street crime
and the war on drugs, and the downplaying of white-color and corporate crime.
This tape offers an analysis of criminal justice issues, media criticism of
crime reporting and explores real solutions to crime. Paper Tiger Tape # 264,
1995, 28 minutes