Active campaigns against "deviant groups" are very useful to police, media, and other elite groups in society. The practice of agenda-setting by media and other elite groups is a very effective way of diverting the masses from meaningful participation in the political process.

Noam Chomsky points out that, in a democracy, elite groups use media and other outlets of myth-making and propaganda to protect their interests, to make sure that the actual extent of democracy does not infringe on their power. Referring to Reinhold Niebuhr, an American that is representative of a long line of western intellectuals who share elitist views about the nature of democracy, he states:

"His [Niebuhr’s] view was that rationality belongs to the cool observer. But because of the stupidity of the average man, he follows not reason, but faith. And this naive faith requires necessary illusion, and emotionally potent oversimplifications, which are provided by the myth-maker to keep the ordinary person on course. It’s not the case, as the naive might think, that indoctrination is inconsistent with democracy. Rather, as this whole line of thinkers observes, it is the essence of democracy."

The media play a large role in creating and fostering public myths. These myths serve to legitimize the power of elite groups within our society.

The local media’s coverage of young offenders is an excellent example of the myth-making process in action. Local media have not provided a wide range of opinions, rather, they have rewarded and reinforced reactionary viewpoints while marginalizing and de-legitimizing others.




Susan Faludi defines trend stories as "articles that claim to divine sweeping shifts in social behaviour while providing little in the way of evidence to support their generalizations."

Faludi states that "Trend journalism attains authority not through actual reporting but through the power of repetition. Said enough times, anything can be made to seem true".

Media coverage of young offenders has followed the typical trend story pattern. Sensational phrases such as "Teenage Violence National Disease", "Youth Violence Soaring", "Violent Youth Spawn an Epidemic of Violence", and "Teen Murder Charges Spiral", have become forceful through the power of repetition. This repetition has been so effective that the public now believes very strongly that the Young Offenders Act needs to be changed, and young people should spend more time in prison.

The media use trend stories because sensationalism sells. It sells audiences to advertisers - the real editors and executive producers of our "independent" media. On those very rare occasions when a youth commits a murder, the media eagerly grab it up, and plaster it on their front page, or make it the lead story on their 6 o’clock newscast / infomercial. The anguished faces of the victims’ families are thrust into our collective consciousness and these rare cases are blown totally out of proportion, and presented as common, everyday occurrences. The end result - another construction of reality by commercial forces.

In researching The Calgary Herald’s coverage of young offenders from 1990-1993, I found that nearly all of the visuals used are either photographs of youths being cuffed by police or worse yet, hand-drawn depictions of youths committing crimes or engaging in violent acts.

Noam Chomsky refers to this type of visual propaganda as the use of "emotionally potent oversimplifications". The use of striking visual propaganda (and the willingness of the police to provide these photo opportunities) allow the media and police to replay a morality tale dealing with deviance and the need for coercive social control. The effect of this propaganda is to legitimate the coercive power of elite groups in society to the point where we do not question whether the use of such coercion is valid and/or just.




Police are far and away the group used most often as the primary source in news stories pertaining to young offenders. Many times, it is the police themselves who supply the media with the story. I find this trend disturbing and problematic. Every time I hear a police source stating that military-style work camps are the answer to teen crime, I cringe. The media construct the police as authorities in the realm of social matters. I, however, find the idea of giving coercive, para-military groups the ability to dictate social solutions repugnant.

The other problem with relying on police for your sources is that the police are always going to emphasize increases in criminal activity because convincing the public that deviance is on the increase promotes job security for the police force. According to psychiatrist Clive Chamberlain, we should use "caution when using police statistics to demonstrate increases in criminal activity because those same stats are likely being used to justify an increase in police budgets."

Police need crime. It provides their livelihood and reinforces their para-military institution’s basic (and very simplistic) assumptions about the nature of people and society. Theirs is a world of good vs. evil, good being the status-quo, evil being anything and anybody challenging the status-quo.

Police forces exist to serve and protect. They exist to protect the privileged and the reigning class system.

The media explicitly or implicitly places the blame for youth crime on individuals or individual groups in society. In so doing, the media and its representatives de-contextualize events that they cover. Ericson, Baranek, and Chan describe this process:

"The emphasis on individual morality is not only a dramatic technique for presenting news stories as serial narratives involving leading actors but also a political means of allocating responsibility for actions and attributing accountability. Moreover, in law enforcement, as in news, personalization combined with an event-orientation produces the appearance (or collective representation) that troublesome persons rather than troublesome social structures are at fault. This mystifies the social roots of trouble in a society that is structurally unequal. By individualizing problems on a case-by-case basis, the news and law rule out systemic and structural accounts that might question the authority of cultural values, the state, and the news and legal institutions themselves."

What exists is a situation where primarily authoritarian voices - representatives of coercive institutions - cast blame on young people (individually or collectively) for the societal problem of youth crime. Therefore, you have authoritarian representatives of the societal power structure condemning "troublesome persons", while simultaneously working to deflect criticism from the troubled social systems and class-system they represent.

This is where right-wing politicians enter the picture. The current social climate in Canada (especially in Alberta) of "deficit busting" has resulted in an ironic situation where we believe that we can save money by slashing social programs. However, many of these social programs address root causes of crime, such as poverty, and are much cheaper in the long run than paying for more people to spend more time in prisons. It is not surprising, therefore, to hear Ralph Klein denouncing welfare while advocating death sentences for youths. Death sentences for young offenders would allow him to play out his Dirty Harry approach to law and order while simultaneously saving money on the overwhelming costs associated with detaining more people in prisons. Politicians and the media deliberately de-contextualize youth crime because it serves their purposes.

There are many who altogether refute the perception that youth crime is on the rise. Criminologist Peter Carrington is one of the few dissenting voices given space in the Calgary Herald in recent years. He offers some compelling arguments against the youth crime myths.

Carrington points out many inconsistencies in the reporting of youth crime such as the fact that 16 and 17 year-olds are now charged as young offenders. Under the Juvenile Delinquents Act, 16 and 17 year-olds were charged as adults. When the Young Offenders Act replaced the Juvenile Delinquents Act in 1984, 16 and 17 year-old offenders were removed from the ranks of adult offenders and added to the list of young offenders, causing an artificial inflation in the youth crime statistics.

Carrington also points to the increased vigilance on the part of police forces to single out crimes committed by youths. If you put more resources into any area of crime, you will lay more charges. Therefore, crime isn’t necessarily up, charges are.

Youths are also being charged for things they never used to be charged for, such as schoolyard fights. By far the largest increase in charges against youths pertaining to violence is in the category of minor assault. Carrington speaks of one youth who was charged with assault with a weapon. The weapon was a snowball.

In our society, it is adults, not teenagers, who commit the vast majority of crimes, violent or otherwise. So the question arises: Why the focus on young people?

This is part of a whole movement towards scapegoating youth for problems in society. Young people are easy targets: they can’t vote, they have less legal rights than adults, and they generally have limited access to avenues of power. Simply put, they’re a marginalized group - subject to the rule of adults.

A good example of this is last year’s protest by high-school students against government cutbacks to education. Groups of high-school students walked out of classes and went downtown to voice their concerns about the funding cutbacks to their schools. Ralph Klein (He listens, He cares) responded by threatening to charge the protesters with truancy.

With further environmental degradation, cuts to education and health-care, and an unemployment rate so high that even jobs once reserved for young people (newspaper delivery, McDonald’s) are now being filled by adults, the only thing that the "Alberta Advantage" offers young people is a jail cell. In our classist, consumer society, those who can’t be consumers of goods are forced to become consumers of control.