Murder in our midst: comparing crime coverage ethics in an age of globalized news

"Crime stories attract audiences and social buzz, but they also serve as prisms for perceived threats.

As immigration, technological change, and globalization reshape our world, anxiety spreads. Because journalism plays a role in how the public adjusts to moral and material upheaval, this unease raises the ethical stakes.

Reporters can spread panic or encourage reconciliation by how they tell these stories.

Murder in our Midst uses crime coverage in select North American and Western European countries as a key to examine culturally constructed concepts like privacy, public, public right to know, and justice.

Working from close readings of news coverage, codes of ethics and style guides, and personal interviews with almost 200 news professionals, this book offers fertile material for a provocative conversation.

We use our findings to divide the ten countries studied into three media models; we explore what the differing coverage decision