Gender in crime news: A case study test of the chivalry hypothesis Submitted to the Feminist Scholarship Division for presentation at the 2004 Annual Meeting of the International Communication Association

This content analysis examined the chivalry hypothesis in six months of crime reporting in a local newspaper. This hypothesis posits that female criminals receive more lenient treatment in the criminal justice system and in news coverage of their crimes than their male counterparts. The study found partial support for the chivalry hypothesis and prompts a more nuanced formulation of the hypothesis—here termed patriarchal chivalry. This study also revealed a Bonnie and Clyde-effect: men and women collaborating in crime often received harsher news coverage than men or women acting alone in criminal pursuit. Gender and crime coverage 3 Due to the deviance, drama and human consequences inherent in law-breaking activities, crime has potential for mythmaking and sensationalism unlike most other news topics. It is not surprising that for as long as mass media have existed, crime news has been a staple feature of print and broadcast content both in local and national markets. Media scholars show similar levels of interest in crime coverage and have studied crime reporting from many different angles. What is striking from examining this body of literature is that the gender of victims and criminals is typically examined as a secondary interest, if at all. Yet, crime stories offer a valuable opportunity to systematically observe gender politics. Gerbner, Gross, Signorelli, Morgan, and Jackson-Beeck (1979) argue that the media’s portrayed repercussions of criminal actions often demonstrate power relations to society’s members by communicating “who gets away with what against whom” (p. 181). Their work suggests that crime coverage must be studied within the patriarchal context in which it is produced and consumed, where some images of crime and gender are privileged over others. In fiction and news, women have been shown to mostly appear as victims, not perpetrators, of crime. Research has therefore centered on the portrayal of their victimization. Some work in this vein demonstrates how the media’s construction of female victimization (males are aggressive; females are passive) reinforces hegemonic discourses of gender (Chesney-Lind, 1999; Madriz, 1997). To date, however, there has been little work on the media’s construction of female criminality. While the victimized woman doesn’t pose a threat to patriarchal ideology, the female criminal sometimes does (Faith, 1993). The question remains if female criminals who violate gender norms and challenge patriarchy receive the same media treatment as their male counterparts. The media’s representation of female criminals became a matter of public debate in a small Midwestern community when the local chapter of The Commission on the Status of Women expressed concern about gender bias in the local newspaper’s crime reporting. Motivated by both theoretical interest and the opportunity to inform this public debate, a content analysis was conducted to compare the coverage of male and female criminals in this local newspaper. Gender and crime coverage 4 Prominence and sensationalism When women are featured in mediated crimes they are typically over-represented as victims of crime (Chermak, 1995; Surette, 1998). This also holds true for news. Numerous studies have shown that television news (Entman, 1992; Gilliam & Iyengar, 2000; Grabe, 1999; Grabe, Zhou, & Barnett, 2001; Kilgard & Craft, 1995; Whitney, Fritzler, Jones, Mazzarella, & Rakow, 1989) and newspapers (Davis, 1952; Naylor, 2001; Roshier, 1973; Smith, 1984) over-represent male criminality and victimization of females. This prompts the first two hypotheses: H1: Using FBI statistics as the baseline, women will be under-represented in the role of criminal and over-represented in the role of victim. H2: Using FBI statistics as the baseline, men will be over-represented in the role of criminal and under-represented in the role of victim. It is understandable that most research has focused on the portrayals of women in their most prominent role in crime stories, as victims of crime. Yet, it is reasonable to argue that their underrepresentation as lawbreakers deserves much-needed research attention. At the time of our study, few other published studies had done so. The study reported here will therefore primarily focus on gender portrayals of criminals, not victims. Moreover, assessing gender distributions through headcounts of criminals in crime reports, as proposed in the first two hypotheses, is an important first step in exploring gender differences in reporting. Yet, the structural features and narrative subtleties of reporting that impact the way criminals are framed cannot be addressed in looking at headcounts only. The placement of stories in a newspaper, headline size, and accompanying photographs or graphics have been shown to influence audience interpretations as well as their attention and memory for news. For example, Thorson (1995) has demonstrated the importance of visual material in facilitating information recall and also found that readers are more likely to read articles that are Gender and crime coverage 5 accompanied by visual displays. Moreover, a large headline size and placement of an article as the lead story signals the prominence of a story and is often associated with sensationalism in reporting. For example, Francke (1978) refers to the lurid headlines of Yellow Journalism and the concocted illustrations of the 1920’s tabloids to argue that visual features may contribute to what we identify as sensational journalism (see also Tannenbaum & Lynch, 1960). Variance in the prominence or relative sensationalism with which crimes committed by men and women are reported suggests gender bias. This leads to research question one: RQ1: Is there variance in the prominence with which stories about male and female criminals are reported? Crime type and the motivation behind the act Existing research shows that crime type and the motivation for committing crime are important dimensions in probing the latent differences in how men and women criminals are framed in crime reporting. Weinmann and Fishman’s (1988) study of Israel's leading dailies is the first to directly apply the “chivalry hypothesis” to print media coverage of crime. This hypothesis asserts that because women are viewed as weak and irrational, law enforcers and the criminal justice system treat them, across the board, in a more lenient manner (Anderson, 1976; Pollock, 1950). In recent decades, some studies have offered partial support for the chivalry hypothesis (Bernstein et al., 1979; Moulds, 1980), while others have challenged the idea (Farrington & Morris, 1983; Edwards, 1984; Eaton, 1986). Feminist criminologists have pointed out that chivalry is not equally bestowed to all female criminals (Chesney-Lind, 1999; Crew, 1991; Feinman, 1980; Kruttschnitt, 1982; Bernstein, Cardascia, & Ross, 1982; Morris, 1987; Rafter, 1990). Chesney-Lind (1978) asserts that “paternalism accrues only to women who conform to a sex role which requires their obedience to men, their passivity, and their acceptance of their status as the sexual property of only one man. 1 The Naylor (2001) study is the exception, showing that the proportion of stories about women committing crimes to be higher than the proportion of crimes committed by men, according to police Gender and crime coverage 6 Should they step outside of this boundary . . . chivalry is replaced by harsh exploitation and harassment ” (p. 204). Work by feminist criminologists has demonstrated that it is the type of offense rather than the severity of the offense that determines how women are treated in the criminal justice system. Female criminals who commit unfeminine acts (e.g., behave violently or victimize children) are treated much more severely than their counterparts whose illegal activity conforms to the standards of womanhood (e.g., stealing food for one’s family). Petty crimes committed by women are therefore often overlooked, while violent women are vigorously punished and publicly demonized to serve as a cautionary tale to women about the risks associated with strategies of male violence (Chesney-Lind, 1999, pp. 133-134). The criminal justice system’s response toward women is therefore enforcing stereotypical female sex roles that perpetuate patriarchy (Birch, 1994; Chesney-Lind, 1986; Lloyd, 1995). The media’s treatment of female criminals follow the same pattern. Weimann and Fishman (1988) concluded that the print media tended to be chivalrous toward female criminals because they present female offenses as a result of circumstantial factors beyond individual control, including being the pawns of male criminals (see also Steffensmeier, 1983). But, in line with findings by female criminologists, Weimann and Fishman (1988) discovered that the type of crime women committed significantly affected how they were treated in news coverage. For example, women who committed crimes against persons were not given “chivalrous” treatment by the media. Interestingly, Weimann and Fishman (1988) found that the explanatory narratives for male criminality tended to be more consistent across crime type, while the media treatment for female criminality was less stable. In a similar vein, Naylor (2001) found that violent women were often framed as irrational or emotional in the press and that some of the stories about “women taking power” were explained in