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The 1955 killing of fourteen-year-old African-American Emmett Till in Mississippi continues to haunt historians, academicians, and students of pop culture with at least four books recently retelling the story of his murder. Much of today's retrospective discussion of the case is based on two underlying assumptions: his murder received extensive national coverage in 1955, and most Americans were disgusted by the murder and the acquittal of the two confessed killers. This article questions both assumptions by examining the response to the Till murder in ten national magazines and concludes that their coverage was more like a firefly illuminating a small patch of ground brilliantly but only for a second. In the brief afterglow, one could wonder if there was any light at all or just a trick of the mind.

The concept and figure of al-futuwwa is explored through a closer reading of the murder of Imtithal Fawzi and an analysis of contemporary reactions to it.

Previous scholarly research on selection bias in news about murder indicates that race and gender stereotypes and, to a much lesser extent, the relative frequency of particular murders explain why some homicides are made into news and others are not. However, previous research has directed nearly exclusive attention to white newspapers. The present research remedies this omission by directing attention to the factors that shape selection bias in news about murder in a big-city African American newspaper. The results indicate that the relative frequency dimension of newsworthiness is a weak and inconsistent explanation of selection bias in news about murder in the black newspaper examined. Race, however, has profoundly different effects in white and African American newspapers. Whereas white newspapers use long-standing race stereotypes to filter news about murder, the data from the African American newspaper signal a firm rejection of the black image in the white mind (Entman and Rojecki 2000). Newspaper images of women and men are another matter. In both black and white newspapers, gender stereotypes uniformly filter news about murder and fundamentally distort gender effects. The implications of these findings are discussed including the clear need and ample scholarly room for replicative analyses of news about murder in other African American newspapers, with a keen eye on both 'raced ways of seeing' (Hunt 1999, pp. 181-215) and gendered ways of seeing.

The 'underclass' is widely held by commentators of the Right to be responsible for a host of social problems, including violent crime. This paper shows how in the reporting of sexually motivated murder in a sample of nine British newspapers for one complete year (1992), the image constructed is one where unemployed and other marginalised men are portrayed as the main perpetrators of sexual violence. This, the authors argue, hampers our understanding of sexual violence, for it suggests that it is only men of a 'low' socio-economic background who are a potential threat to women and children. It is also suggested that the 'symbolic environment' of the press reporting of sexual murder provides a context in which a more authoritarian benefit regime and greater control of poor communities can be spuriously justified.

In 2002, a group of drunk and stoned teenagers randomly beat a 48-year-old blind man to death on the northern Minnesota Indian reservation where I grew up. I decided it [...]

The O.J. Simpson arrest and trial provide substantial evidence that despite a few significant changes, power and influence remain in the hands of men at the expense of women. Such commonplace happenings as wife-beating drew more attention and the presence of female district attorney and judge drew only temporary comment from the media. Signs that prurient interest in the case runs rampant among both men and women is more disturbing. Other aspects, such as Brian Kato and supposed horror at domestic violence, are worse still.

The documentary 'Paradise Lost' (1996) and its follow-up film 'Revelations' (2001) highlight how the death of three boys in West Memphis in 1993 and the subsequent events have been shaped by the media. The public opinion and the course of the case have been based on the media projection of the events, forgetting the real events but remembering only a simulation as constructed by the media.

This article examines how race and gender influenced the criminal justice process in antebellum New Orleans. The author, analyzing a murder tiral, argues the media's portrayal of the victim's female slave and wife demonstrate a patriarchal society that penetrated the judicial system.

A Turkish seeker for political asylum was murdered in Glasgow, Scotland in Aug, 2001. British and Scottish media reversed earlier coverage, tending to reinforce the negative aspects of this story by portraying nations where refugees looked for asylum as widely racist and refugees as stereotypically sympathetic.

Len Jenoff told Nancy Phillips that he had arranged the murder of a rabbi's wife--at the rabbi's request. But the confession was off the record. What should she do? For […]

The Philadelphia Daily News is a gritty tabloid with great sports coverage, attitude-laden headlines and a perfect feel for the tough town it calls home. But Editor Zack Stalberg wants […]

Due to a NACLA error, "Work, Sex and Danger in Ciudad Juarez" by Debbie Nathan (Nov/Dec 1999) erred in describing political responses to the murders of women in Ciudad Juarez, [...]

When Philadelphia Daily News columnist W. Russell G. Byers was to death on Dec. 4, the newspaper staff had to contend with reporting a murder and mourning a friend. It [...]