The media prides itself on objective reporting and journalistic
integrity (Schissel, 1997), albeit, the media - the news - is governed
by the community on a supply-and-demand basis (Ibid.); what happens on
a ‘slow news day’? The media often finds itself sensationalising
events, or embellishing previously reported occurrences so as to
appease the audiences; more often than not, the disaffiliated, or marginalised,
segments of the community, particularly the youth, find itself at the end
of this opportunistic reporting. Schissel (1997) suggests, “television
news teeters on the edge between fact and fiction” and “though they [forms
of news accounts] are mandated to be based on an objective reality, are
largely based on consumer demand,” thus it is quite easy to espy
how concerns within society, especially over youth
crime, are formulated and fuelled by the media. Such moral concerns
are referred to as moral panics.
Moral panics erstwhile resurface
when a new, but similar, topic of concern arises in the public domain.
These panics, when specifically generated by the mass media (radio, television,
cinema, and print)(Springhall, 1998, p.160), are called media panics.
Socially, these are used to attempt to re-establish the status-quo, and
culturally, to act to prevent the undermining of the cultural elite as
a critical force (Ibid.)