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Exploring News Media Constructions in Cases of Wrongful Conviction Wilfrid Laurier University Scholars Commons @ Laurier Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive) 2015 Critical Champions or Careless Condemners? Exploring News Media Constructions in Cases of Wrongful Conviction Katherine Rozad Wilfrid Laurier University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholars.wlu.ca/etd Part of the Criminology Commons, Criminology and Criminal Justice Commons, Journalism Studies Commons, Mass Communication Commons, Other Sociology Commons, Quantitative, Qualitative, Comparative, and Historical Methodologies Commons, and the Social Control, Law, Crime, and Deviance Commons Recommended Citation Rozad, Katherine, "Critical Champions or Careless Condemners? Exploring News Media Constructions in Cases of Wrongful Conviction" (2015). Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive). 1764. https://scholars.wlu.ca/etd/1764 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by Scholars Commons @ Laurier. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive) by an authorized administrator of Scholars Commons @ Laurier. For more information, please contact [email protected]. CRITICAL CHAMPIONS OR CARELESS CONDEMNERS? EXPLORING NEWS MEDIA CONSTRUCTIONS IN CASES OF WRONGFUL CONVICTION by Katy Rozad B.A. (Honours), Wilfrid Laurier University, 2013 THESIS Submitted to the Department of Criminology in partial fulfilment of the requirements for Master of Arts in Criminology Wilfrid Laurier University © Katy Rozad 2015 Abstract Countless incidences occur throughout the world each and every day. However, only a few of these occurrences are deemed newsworthy by the media. One area of information quite often categorized as “newsworthy” is that surrounding crime. Within crime-related news coverage are occasionally cases of wrongful conviction – miscarriages of justice in which the innocent are labeled “guilty” and wrongly punished. Despite decades of research in both the areas of crime and media, as well as wrongful conviction studies, no research to date has examined the way that cases of wrongful conviction are constructed in the media from the beginnings of a case to the end. Thus, this SSHRC-funded research project aimed to uncover these constructions through qualitatively analyzing 1,495 newspaper articles related to three cases of wrongful conviction in Canada: Guy Paul Morin, Robert Baltovich and James Driskell. Through analyzing these cases from the time that the victim went missing to the eventual acquittal of the wrongly convicted, the employment of a social constructionist perspective yielded many interesting findings. The findings centered on investigating the media as a claimsmaker with the goal of entertaining to make a profit. Resulting from this capitalistic goal, the constructions of victims, villains and heroes in the cases relied on the just-world assumption – a culturally accessible narrative. The grounding of these stories in a just-world belief was demonstrably a way to make sense and simplicity out of these convoluted and complex cases of wrongful conviction. i Acknowledgements I would like to use this space to acknowledge everyone who was integral to this process and who supported the both the creation and completion of this project. First, thank you to my supervisor Dr. Ken Dowler for your guidance towards this topic which proved to result in a both fulfilling and interesting research project and for your assistance throughout this process. Secondly, I would like to thank my second reader, Dr. Tony Christensen. Your theoretical, methodological and practical feedback throughout this project was irreplaceable. The resulting depth of the analysis is entirely attributable to your guidance. I have learned so much about constructionist research as a result of your involvement. Though your official project title is that of a second reader, your involvement and assistance proved to be much more than that, so thank you! Third, I would like to thank my external examiner, Dr. Dorothy Pawluch. I immensely appreciated your kindness and the addition of your expertise to this project. Thank you for sharing some of the ways that you conceptualized parts of this project, they will undoubtedly aid in any outputs that may result from this data. Next, I would like to acknowledge Dr. Carrie Sanders. Though unofficially involved with this project, your endless support and guidance in everything that I do is much appreciated. If it were not for your advice I would likely still be reading and coding thousands of newspaper articles. Thank you for saving me from that and for everything else that you do! Acknowledgements would not be complete if I did not thank the infamous Krystals. Crystal and Krystle, thank you for your company in the office over the past year and for continually answering the “does this make sense?” and “what am I trying to say?” questions. This entire process would not have been the same without you two! Additionally, I should thank my tireless editors, my awesome fiancé, Jordan, and wonderful sister, Teddy. I appreciate the maintenance of your interest in this project over the past two years and all that you both did to help me make my thesis the best it could be! Last, but certainly not least, thank you to Marg Harris. On a practical level, this could not have been done without you because of all of the necessary printing this project entailed that you assisted with. More importantly though, thank you for all of your support, every single day since this program started, and for being a consistent, smiling face in the department and brightening the times that were often dark because of this exceptionally long document. ii Table of Contents Abstract……………………………………………………………………………………….......ii Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………………………....iii CHAPTER ONE – Introduction………………………………………………………………..1 CHAPTER TWO – Literature Review………………………………………………………....5 Wrongful Conviction Literature…………………………………………………………………..5 The Media’s Role in Wrongful Conviction……………………………………………………….7 Pre-Trial Publicity or ‘Trial by Media’…………………………………………………………..11 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………….15 CHAPTER THREE – Theoretical Framework………………………………………………17 Social Constructionism…………………………………………………………………………..17 The Media and the Social Construction of Crime……………………………………………….18 The Business of the Media………………………………………………………………………20 News Media as Entertainment, Crime as Entertaining…………………………………………..22 Appealing to Pre-Established Cultural Themes and Employing Accessible Narratives………...25 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………….29 CHAPTER FOUR – Methodology…………………………………………………………….31 Research Questions………………………………………………………………………………31 Constructivist Grounded Theory Approach……………………………………………………...32 Sample and Data Gathering……………………………………………………………………...32 Data Analysis…………………………………………………………………………………….36 Initial Coding…………………………………………………………………………….36 Focused Coding………………………………………………………………………….37 Analytical Memos……………………………………………………………………….37 Case Overviews………………………………………………………………………………….38 Guy Paul Morin………………………………………………………………………….39 Robert Baltovich………………………………………………………………………....40 James Driskell……………………………………………………………………………41 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………….42 CHAPTER FIVE – Pre-Trial – Establishing an Emotional Connection……………………43 Creating a Sympathy-Worthy Victim……………………………………………………………43 The Innocent Victim……………………………………………………………………..44 Placing the Victim on the Moral Hierarchy……………………………………………...46 Constructing a Relatable Victim…………………………………………………………50 Building Fear…………………………………………………………………………………….53 Sponsoring Safety Concerns……………………………………………………………..53 Providing a Target for Moral Outrage…………………………………………………………...58 Identifying a Blameworthy Suspect……………………………………………………...60 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………….65 iii CHAPTER SIX – Victims and Villains on Trial……………………………………………...68 Media Trials……………………………………………………………………………………...68 Continuing to Construct a Victim Worthy of Sympathy………………………………………...69 Maintaining Morality…………………………………………………………………….70 The Role of Appearance in Constructing Sympathy…………………………………….72 Insisting on Innocence…………………………………………………………………...74 Victim Blaming? Contrary Constructions of the Victim………………………………………...77 Questioning the Victim’s Moral Nature…………………………………………………79 The Careless, and Therefore Condemnable, Victim……………………………………..80 The Troubled Victim……………………………………………………………………..82 Constructing the Accused………………………………………………………………………..85 Justifying Condemnation by Reconstructing the Past…………………………………...85 Designing a Dangerous Outsider………………………………………………………...90 Maintaining Confidence in Criminal Justice Practitioners………………………………………93 The Incompetent Investigator……………………………………………………………94 Excusing Evidentiary Issues……………………………………………………………..97 Seeking Sympathy……………………………………………………………………….99 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………...101 CHAPTER SEVEN – The Appeal Stage and the Management of Emerging Complexity.104 Gone and Somewhat Forgotten – Reiterating the Pain of the Victim’s Family………………..105 Challenging Constructions of the Accused…………………………………………………….108 Explaining Errors through Continued Condemnation………………………………….109 Portraying Positivity – Complicating Constructions of the Accused…………………..115 Replacing the Villain…………………………………………………………………...119 The Systemic Evasion of Denunciation………………………………………………………...125 Individualizing Culpability while Upholding Character………………………………..126 Excusing Errors…………………………………………………………………………128 Unclaimed Condemnation……………………………………………………………...129 Attributing Evidentiary Issues
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