The Media and the Public Confidence in the Police

Abstract

The media’s role as a “fourth” power factor today can hardly be doubted by anyone. But if examined the police’s popularity as presented from the point of view of the media interests’, there appears to be a difference in the interests between the two. However, the police’s struggle to win over the confidence of the public, despite the media, is only a show, in fact, the police are not able to win this war. The police – absent their own channels of communication – will always be a news provider, but not the forwarder and mediator. Furthermore as the police increasingly see the media’s mechanism of news-selection they will feel resistance is senselessness and futile and become more and more passive and defensive.