Drug Reporting

In July 2000, the Australian Institute of Criminology released a report, Print Reporting on Drugs and Crime 1995-1998, from researchers Michael Teece and Toni Makkai. Here is a summary of the paper. The Council's revised guideline on drug reporting can be found elsewhere on this site.

In addition to analysing clippings from the relevant period for any significant information on the sources, focus, and reported connections, the report concludes that the print media need to introduce formal guidelines on reporting drugs and crime.

The report suggests that this is important because, while policy development is constrained by public opinion, and the media may not change opinion, they do set the agenda and the parameters of debate. So, the way in which the media depict drugs and crime has serious policy ramifications. The media are one of the principal sources of information on subjects outside people's direct experience, including drug-related crime.

It argues that media reporting on drugs and crime has been widely criticised as a limited and distorting representation, dependent largely on limited, easily accessible sources and presenting a one-sided picture. There have been few systematic empirical studies of the media's portrayal of drugs and crime in Australia. Two noted by the report are from 1983 and 1985. There was also a 2000 study which examined the portrayal of heroin addiction within the context of the ACT heroin trial, which concluded that:

The cultural value of abstinence from drug use and the ideology of individualism with its connotations of heroin use as a choice that required punishment rather than help were rarely challenged, reinforcing the view of drug use as a problem of individual morality.

The database

The report examines a database of 8651 press reports focused specifically on drugs and crime. The period covered is between January 1995 and December 1998. Among the limitations of the analysis noted in the paper is the difficulty in determining how representative the sample of clippings is. In particular, regional newspapers may be under-represented.

As local issues are important factors in determining coverage, the fact that the "drug problem" has until recently been perceived as primarily a "big city" problem might explain the fewer number of articles in regional newspapers. But the coverage of drugs and crime in regional papers increased from very low figures to 18 per cent in 1998. This mirrors an increasing concern about illicit drugs in rural and regional Australia.

Articles were classified into routine articles, feature or in-depth pieces, or editorials. Just over three-quarters of the articles were routine reports on drugs and crime. Of the remaining articles, 13 per cent were feature or in-depth pieces and 10 per cent were editorial or comment pieces. The Sunday papers and the 'quality dailies' were the groups most likely to have covered drugs and crime in in-depth feature pieces. The 'quality dailies' were more likely than were the tabloids to devote extended attention and coverage to drugs and crime. Editorial comment was most likely to be found in the metropolitan tabloids.

Over the four years of the study, there was some change in the form of reporting on drugs and crime. The number of in-depth feature articles as a proportion of the total increased significantly from 11 per cent in 1995 to 21 per cent in 1998.

Sources of Information

According to the report, the media use a variety of sources. Sometimes, several sources were referred to in the one article. The 865 articles used 1,238 different sources. The major sources of information were the police (35%) and the courts (28%). When police, courts, politicians, and bureaucratic and local government sources are added, "official sources" made up three-quarters of all sources. Research has shown there is a close relationship between crime reporters and official sources.

In-depth feature articles and editorial and opinion pieces were much more likely to draw upon research information than were routine reports on drugs and crime. Routine reports were more likely to draw on courts for information (45%) than the other types of articles. The major city dailies were significantly more likely to draw on research sources than were any of the other newspaper categories.

Over the four-year period, the major city dailies moved towards a more in-depth coverage of drugs and crime as an important social problem. Given that the number of feature articles and editorial and opinion pieces that cover drugs and crime increased over time, we would expect to find that sources of information also changed. This has indeed been the case. From 1995 to 1998, the proportion of clippings that used police sources increased from 42 to 52 per cent, the use of court sources declined from 49 to 26 per cent, while the use of research sources increased from 9 to 16 per cent.

17 per cent of all articles quoted statistics about crime and/or drugs in their reports. Of these, 42 per cent used police statistics, 38 per cent used statistics from research, 3 per cent (5 articles) used court statistics, and 17 per cent (25 articles) used figures from other sources.

Drug Focus

One quarter of the clippings referred to cannabis, 15 per cent to amphetamines, 11 per cent to cocaine, and 48 per cent to heroin. In total, 29 per cent of clippings referred to more than one drug. Ecstasy and hallucinogens were reported at low levels in all types of paper: 3 per cent and 2.5 per cent respectively of all clippings mentioned these drugs.

Reported Connections Between Drugs and Other Criminality

The articles in the sample were coded into 4 categories according to the connection they posited between drug use and crime. These were:

• the pharmacological effects of drugs cause drug users to commit crimes;
   
• drug users commit crimes to pay for drugs;
   
• trafficking in drugs is associated with violence; and
   
• drug trafficking is an important criminal enterprise.

Over half of the articles did not expressly posit specific connections between illegal drugs and other forms of crime. 20 per cent of articles made no comment on links between drugs and crime. A further 29 per cent discussed drug trafficking as a criminal enterprise without explicitly positing links between drugs and other forms of crime. Not surprisingly, economic-compulsion - the need to commit crimes to finance an expensive drug habit - was the single most common connection claimed in the press. 29 per cent of all articles posited such a link (some of these also mentioned other connections). "Systemic" crime, principally violent disputes and intimidation arising from an underground trade in drugs, was not far behind.

Analyses show that the proportion of articles reporting an 'economic-compulsive' link between drugs and crime increased steadily from 20 per cent in 1995 to 46 per cent in 1998.

Discussion

From the current sample of newspaper clippings, media concern about drugs and crime appear to have increased from the beginning of the study period. How drugs and crime are perceived and represented in the media also appears to have changed. This is evident from the following trends observed in the current data:

• number of feature articles as well as editorial and opinion columns devoted to drugs and crime have increased;
   
• coverage of drugs and crime has increased markedly in regional newspapers;
   
• the proportion of articles that draw on research has increased, as has the proportion that cited statistics, though the overall level of use is extremely low;
   
• the papers have become less likely to report drug trafficking and associated criminality and more likely to report 'economic-compulsive' property crime by individual drug users; this appears to be related to increased attention to heroin as the main problem drug; and
   
• increased attention to heroin in the major quality dailies appears to have reduced differences between them and the other daily newspapers in coverage of drugs and crime, in terms of levels of coverage, and depiction of the drug-crime link.

Policy Implications

A degree of distortion and bias is inherent in crime journalism, if only because official sources predominate. The proportion of articles that report research findings is small. Clearly, this offers an opportunity for researchers who study and publish on various aspects of crime to claim their place as credible and authoritative sources of information about drugs and crime.

Researchers need to work with the media to bring their expertise to a wider audience. Such efforts foster a better-informed and considered discourse about crime, and thereby facilitate evidence-based policy making. An important initiative in this regard is the Australian Drug Foundation (ADF) regular one-page newsletter (DrugLeads). The newsletter is primarily aimed at providing quality, research-based information and statistics on drugs to media professionals.

The report recommends that the media adopt formal guidelines on reporting drugs and crime. Such guidelines could encourage journalists to refrain from either glamorising or trivialising drugs and crime, to check the reliability of their sources, and to consult experts as appropriate. Most importantly, guidelines would emphasise the media's duty to report drugs and crime in a manner that takes account of the public interest. They would encourage news professionals to show greater concern for their work's impact on popular discourse about drugs and crime in reporting news.

[These recommendations were taken into account in the development of a new guideline on reporting of drugs and drug addiction which can be found elsewhere on the website.]

Jack R Herman

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