Crime and Investigative Reporting in the UK

Abstract

Drawing on over 60 interviews with crime journalists, senior officers in the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) and journalists from the new investigative journalism non-profits, this is the first ethnographic study of crime news reporting in the UK for over 25 years. It explores the changes in crime reporting over the last 40 years, including the aftermath of the Leveson Report and the breakdown of relations between the police and the news media. It argues that new technologies are increasingly allowing the MPS to bypass traditional media organisations altogether, but also explores how the new start-ups are increasingly taking over traditional media’s Fourth Estate role and forging new collaborations with members of the public in reporting crime news – an area of research not previously tackled by media criminologists. Crucially, the book also explores how the non-profits are working to reverse representational harms – and the ‘othering’ of marginalised and stigmatised communities – through a focus on changed working practices and greater diversity.