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Reporting Crime and Capitalism: Techniques of Neutralisation in a Corpus of Corporate Fraud News

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Capitalism, Crime and Media in the 21st Century

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Crime, Media and Culture ((PSCMC))

Abstract

This chapter examines the use of techniques of neutralisation in newspaper writing on corporate wrongdoing between 2004 and 2014, using corpus-assisted critical discourse analysis. As “Koller, V. (2004). Metaphor and Gender in Business Media Discourse. London: Palgrave”, suggests, business journalists tend to emulate the language and adopt the perspective of those corporate parties covered in their reporting. These newspaper articles argue, through various linguistic choices, that these acts were not committed, but even if they were, they were not, or should not be, considered criminal, especially as few people can legitimately be considered as victims of these acts. Furthermore, these corporate actors are rarely held responsible in these articles. In other words, newspaper reporting on corporate fraud shows many of the neutralisations that would also be expected in discourses of corporate actors. This, in turn, may have far-reaching effects, given the enduring importance of the traditional media in public understanding of crime and criminal justice.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands

    Ilse A. Ras

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  1. Ilse A. Ras
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Correspondence to Ilse A. Ras .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. College of Humanities, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK

    Neil Ewen

  2. Crime and Justice Research Centre, University of Winchester, Winchester, UK

    Alan Grattan

  3. School of Media and Film, University of Winchester, Winchester, UK

    Marcus Leaning

  4. School of Media and Film, University of Winchester, Winchester, UK

    Paul Manning

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Ras, I.A. (2021). Reporting Crime and Capitalism: Techniques of Neutralisation in a Corpus of Corporate Fraud News. In: Ewen, N., Grattan, A., Leaning, M., Manning, P. (eds) Capitalism, Crime and Media in the 21st Century. Palgrave Studies in Crime, Media and Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56444-5_5

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