Portrayal of white collar crime in Canadian news media
Benjamin Letts
April 1997 (rev.)
Previous research has pointed to the fact that the media will often cover crime disproportionately, with an often intensive focus on violent crime. Consequently, other, potentially more damaging forms of crime, such as white-collar crime, will receive less coverage. This study is as extension of previous work done in this area.
Last year, a study by Clayton Jones showed that, despite a social movement against white-collar crime, coverage in the Vancouver Sun of this particular issue had actually declined. However, due to the single-paper design. it was unsure if the Vancouver Sun was an anomaly, or if this situation persisted across the spectrum of Canada's newspapers. This question was given special relevance in light of findings that show that perhaps elite media do not cover white-collar crime as heavily as morn general media. Given that Canada's national paper, the Globe and Mail, caters to a more elite audience, a comparison between papers seemed to be a study worthy of attention.
A six-month sample of articles dealing with white-collar crime was extracted from the Vancouver Sun, Vancouver Province, Globe and Mail and Toronto Star. The focus of the study was to compare white-collar crime coverage between the papers, in an effort to determine if the Vancouver Sun's coverage of white-collar crime was lower than other papers, and if the Globe and Mail could be expected to provide more or less coverage of white-collar crime.
The findings showed that, as diminishing as the Vancouver Sun's white-collar crime coverage may be, it was still the leader, even beating out the Globe and Mail. Interestingly, the Toronto Star had the least coverage of all the papers in the study, surprising, given that it was assumed that the Province would have the least coverage.
Discussion and implications of these findings are provided, as well as weaknesses in the design and suggestions for future research.