Moral Tales: Representations of Child Abuse in the Quality and Tabloid Media

Abstract

Although child abuse is a favourite topic for media stories, there has been little research on how the media portrays such issues. The present research examined the media construction of child abuse in a comprehensive sample of all 1302 reports on the subject during 1995 in a representative quality and tabloid newspaper in NSW. It was found that: the focus was on ‘hard news’ reports of individual cases and the most atypical and sensational ‘child abuse horror stories’; irony or incongruity between the offence and the offender was emphasised; child abuse was popular as a topic for ‘soft news’ (human interest) media stories; criminal justice agencies were the predominant sources used for the stories; child abusers were individualised and demonised by the press and used to promote ‘law and order’ agendas; and there was little coverage of the social causes of abuse and prevention issues. Although both the quality and tabloid press demonstrated these features, there were some marked differences between the coverage in the two sources, such as a much greater emphasis on individual cases in the tabloid press.