*Department of Mass Communications, Faculty of Creative Industries, Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman.
**Associate Professor, Faculty of Social Science and Humanities, School of Media and Communication Studies, University Kebangsaan Malaysia
Online published on 21 March, 2013.
The Malaysian media has constantly been criticized for its portrayal of crimes. Because of the immense popularity of crime as a topic of news the academia has also been excruciatingly interested in studying crime and the media. Studies have revealed that crime is a significant and constant constituent of total news coverage. The fact that crime news like any other ‘beat’ does not only change constantly but gives different meaning to different people where it can create a certain amount of seriousness or fear depending on the writing style or the objective of the crime reporter is also acknowledged in this paper. Using qualitative research methods applied to two prominent case studies and deriving crucial information from crime reporters through in-depth interviews, the paper seek to explore to what extent crime stories create awareness amongst society about the realities of life. Crime news has the opportunity to not only function as a communicative tool for society but communicates to society about everything representative of a criminal, the portrayal of threats, supporting responses, building norms and values whilst warning the public about the consequences of deviance. This research focuses on the use of dramatic elements and tries to answer the question of how crime news can create awareness amongst society and if it can be adapted in different localized settings.
