Arguably, the relationship between the mass media and the criminal justice system is one of the more important, especially regrading the formation of criminal justice policies and general decision-making in the system.1 Criminal justice policy and decision making are both systematic and individual case level phenomena (Doppelt, 1990). That is, criminal justice policy is ultimately determined by both ad hoc decisions made by criminal justice personnel and offenders regarding individual crimes and cases and by system-wide decisions that affect entire classes of offenses and cases.2 In the area of media and criminal justice, two questions arise. The first, "What is the relationship between the media and criminal justice decision making?," has not been answered with any clarity and leads to a second question, "Despite a significant amount of research and interest, why isn't the relationship better understood?" This essay discusses underlying methodological problems that make deciphering the media and criminal justice relationship inherently difficult. Some of these problems are common issues found throughout the social sciences. However, they are exacerbated in the media-criminal justice area. Other problems are unique to the media-criminal justice relationship and arise due to the existence of unusual media relationships with criminal justice policy and decision-making.
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