Intellectual Property Law

Media Manipulation 1919 style

From 2008, plagued by campaign spam and spin of viral messages and robo-calls, a look back to a time of ink and inches:

In 1922, Roscoe Pound and Felix Frankfurter undertook a detailed quantitative study of crime reporting in Cleveland, Ohio, newspapers for January 1919, counting column inches. They found that whereas, in the first half of the month, the total amount of space given over to crime was 925 inches, in the second half it lept to 6,642 inches. This was in spite the fact that the number of crimes reported had increased only from 345 to 363.

They concluded that although the city's much publicized "crime wave" was largely fictitious and manufactured by the press, the coverage had a very real consequence for the administration of criminal justice. Because the public believed they were in the middle of a crime epidemic, they demanded an immediate response from the police and the city authorities. These agencies complied, wishing to retain public support, caring "more to satisfy popular demand than to be observant of the tried process of law". The result was a greatly increased likelihood of miscarriages of justice and sentences more severe than the offenses warranted.[20][21]
His long research into the power behind government in the United States led him to state "The real rulers in Washington are invisible, and exercise power from behind the scenes."
excerpted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_Frankfurter
footnotes
[20] Jensen, Klaus Bruhn (May 10, 2002). A Handbook of Media and Communication Research: Qualitative and Quantitative Methodologies. UK: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-22588-4. p. 45?46
[21]Pound, Roscoe; Felix Frankfurter (1922). Criminal Justice in Cleveland. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Foundation. p. 546

Full post as published by Idea Lawyer Blog on October 18, 2008 (boomark / email).