Deck 9: The Media and Criminal Justice Policy

Question 1

The media could improve the portrayal of crime and justice by providing comprehensive, contextual cover, as is done for ________________.

A) Sporting events
B) Entertainment events
C) Political events
D) Weather coverage

Answer 1

A

Question 2

When a correlation is looked for between media attention on a social issue and public concern, what kind of relationship is found?

A) none
B) weak to moderate
C) moderate to strong
D) strong

Answer 2

B

Question 3

Research indicates that media effects ______________________.

A) Appear to increase with exposure
B) Are more significant the less direct experience people have with an issue
C) Are more significant for newer, concrete issues than for older abstract ones
D) All of the above

Answer 3

D

Question 4

More than one hundred years ago, the media's ecological image of crime was populated by which of the following images?

A) Wolves, sheep, and sheepdogs
B) Wolves, chickens, and hunters
C) Wolves, lambs, and shepherd dogs
D) Bears, cows, and border collies

Question 5

By depicting a predatory violent social environment, the media show the public that due process considerations hamper the police.

Question 6

Which of the following conceptual frameworks, which helps us understand the criminal justice system and mass media's effects on the system, can be defined as: seeing the criminal justice system as an obstacle course in which the government must prove an accused person's guilt while conforming to strict procedural rules?

A) Crime control model
B) Retribution model
C) Due process model
D) Community justice model

Question 7

Today's media-constructed crime-and-justice ecology is populated with what type of offenders, victims, and heroes?

A) ideal
B) unpredictable
C) predictable
D) irrational

Question 8

Which of the following conceptual frameworks, which helps us understand the criminal justice system and mass media's effects on the system, can be defined as: perceiving the criminal justice system as an assembly line along which defendants should be processed as quickly and as efficiently as possible?

A) Crime control model
B) Retribution model
C) Due process model
D) Community justice model

Question 9

The good versus evil perspective on crime and justice is reflected in the common media crime fighter who primarily motivated by upholding the law, rather than individual retribution.

Question 10

The media-criminal justice policy model that predicts that the media's coverage of an external event and the event may both influence criminal justice policy is called _______________________.

A) No media influence external even
B) Simultaneous media influence external event
C) Direct media influence
D) None of the above

Question 11

News stories rarely place criminal justice information in the contexts of history, sociology, or politics by highlighting trends, persistent problems, or other systematic phenomena, which is known as a ____________________.

A) Compounded format
B) Impermanent format
C) Thematic format
D) Episodic format

Question 12

The belief that a divine higher power will intervene, and reveal and punish the guilty while protecting the innocent is known as which of the following?

A) Distributive justice
B) Procedural justice
C) Retributive justice
D) Immanent justice

Question 13

Media effects on the criminal justice system are always perceived as bad.

Question 14

The most relevant crime-and-justice attitude that has been linked to the media is fear of criminal victimization. Fear-of-crime levels are socially important because _______________.

A) they encourage support for punitive criminal justice policies
B) they increase crime
C) they increase incivility
D) the affect police strategies

Question 15

The relationship between the media, policies, and theory can be modeled in a four-step process. Choose which of the following depicts the steps of the process in the correct order.

A) social attitudes, perceptions, and behavior ; media's crime-and-justice content ; social construction reality process ; criminal justice policy.
B) social construction reality process ; social attitudes, perceptions, and behavior ; media's crime-and-justice content ; criminal justice policy.
C) criminal justice policy ; social attitudes, perceptions, and behavior ; social construction reality process ; media's crime-and-justice content.
D) media's crime-and-justice content ; social construction reality process ; social attitudes, perceptions, and behavior ; criminal justice policy.

Question 16

The media's construction of the criminal justice system appears to lead the public to evaluate the overall system as fair.

Question 17

It is theorized that media are homogenizing society, influencing heavy television consumers. The hypothesis that the media affect some viewers more than others regardless of exposure level is called ___________________.

A) inclusion
B) worldview cultivation
C) mainstreaming
D) none of the above

Question 18

In addition to the media's focus on individual factors as the cause of crime, the portrait typically includes social and structural conflicts, such as racism, sexism, and economic inequality.

Question 19

Unexpected effects arise from the novel manner in which the media related to criminal justice policy. One such effect refers to the tendency for officials to treat defendants in unpublicized cases harshly if the press has been demanding such treatment for defendants in publicized cases. This is called the ________________.

A) Anticipatory effect
B) Echo effect
C) Counterproductive effect
D) Reflection effect

Question 20

If DUI prosecutions increase due to an investigatory media series suggesting that lenient treatment for DUI offenders is common, this is an example of a media-related change ____________________.

A) Due to a criminal justice policy change directly lobbied for by the media
B) In anticipation of a policy being changed
C) In anticipation of media attention
D) In response to the public's outcry

Question 21

The media emphasis on crime has been credited with raising the public's fear of being victimized and giving crime an inappropriately high ranking on the public agenda.

Question 22

The available research indicates that among criminal justice officials, even more than among the public, the media significantly influence both policy development and support.

Question 23

If there is a general media effect on criminal justice policy, it is to decrease punitiveness and surveillance.

Question 24

The predictability of the media's effect on criminal justice policy makes it easy to determine the direction and magnitude of influence.

Question 25

Media-based claims are expected to have an equal impact on beliefs about crime among those who have had direct neighborhood experience with crime, as compared to those who have not had direct neighborhood experience with crime.