Published Online: Jun 06, 2014
Page range: 33 - 50
DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/nor-2014-0003
© by Ester Pollack
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License, which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Mediated descriptions of reality are tremendously important to the way the public - and policymakers - perceive the police. The present article analyses how leading news outlets reported and commented on complaints against the Norwegian police during the period 2005-2008. The study is based on content analyses of press and television coverage, with special emphasis on a publicly debated police action in which a student of African origins lost his life. In most cases, news coverage of the police and the investigators of the police is event-driven, and the picture of the police seldom points to institutional or organizational problems. The story is too often one about individual wrongdoings alone. Unfortunately, such media pictures matter and influence policy decisions, especially when they become the point of departure for political debate