newsmaking criminology or "infotainment" criminology?

T he role of the media in mobilising public opinion about crime motivates some criminologists to participate as experts in media constructions of crime and social control. These public discourses help shape the social construction of offending, the public response to victims of violence and the Organisation of popular consent for particular crime control strategies. This article reviews and critiques the empirical and theoretical foundations of a criminological discourse of gender symmetry in domestic violence, and gender bias in the criminal justice system, that has galvanised the popular press in New Zealand and disrupted widely accepted views of domestic violence and criminal justice processes.