Crime And Media Analysis

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“The tenant from hell: How a serial fraudster took advantage of Toronto’s red-hot real estate market” was published in the Toronto Life magazine by Kat Shermack on August 20th, 2015. The article describes a young couple who moved to Doha, Qatar for a job opportunity, however didn’t want to sell their home. Instead, they decided to rent out their home, with the help of a relator, they thought they’ve found the perfect tenants. Jesse Gubb claimed him and his family were going to be living in the home, however Jesse had different plans. He had been illegally subletting the home to women between ages 19-25. He had put up walls and had about 14 women living in the home, paying him $550 a month in rent and had a series of rules to follow. With his …show more content…
How the media constructs the crime, the words they use, the information they include and the statements they comprise all control the impact of the crime. Both these crimes I decided to explore were constructed differently within the media. They are different in the simplest sense of the extremeness of them. The gang robbery was focused on much more heavily than the tenant fraud crime within the media. The gang robbery was explored in a variety of newspapers as well as a variety of news stations. Comparing this to the tenant fraud crime that was much less shown as it was only featured in a magazine. This leads into the impact of the media base and how their views can alter the perception of the crime. The Toronto Star is said to have more of a liberal than conservative view which focuses more on the impact of the community and the people. Statements such as “terrorized their victims”, “plagued the city with the most gun violence this year” and “spreading like a bad smell” strengthen the fact that the article is heavily based on how the crimes impact on the community. This crime was also casted through a problem frame as the article focuses on the bad affects the crime had toward the victims and community and ends with a goal to solve the problem in the future. We then compare this with the tenant fraud article which was published in a magazine, The Toronto Life. A magazine is a different media base, …show more content…
In both articles, the perpetrators were male, this is common, however that doesn’t mean they were all portrayed the same. In the robbery article the perpetrators were displayed using very exaggerated adjectives, being called “pathetic parasites” and a “group of thugs”. All the perpetrators were black and could be a reason for this language. The article portrayed the perpetrators as folk devils, as they were presented as outsiders, since they were from a gang, and the root cause of many social problems. Words such as “terrorized their victims”, “plagued the city with the most gun violence this year” and “spreading like a bad smell” were just some statements that indicated them as folk devils. There was also the statement “these people should be looked at as persons of interest for other violent crimes in these neighborhoods” indicating that they are responsible for even more crimes, this is said without any evidence therefore they are being portrayed worse than what may be true. Since the perpetrators were gang members’ society can view them as much worse than the crime they committed, due to the stereotyping that comes with gangs’ in society. Furthermore, in the robbery article the main source of information was straight from the police this indicates the severity of the crime as society views the police as the “good guys” and we know that if they are protecting and
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