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.