Reading 5

In the article by Kasinsky, she explains how there is interaction between the news media and police. She gave two cases of how news media and police interact. One of the cases was called the, “Stuart Murder,” which related the murder of Charles Stuart’s wife. After the incident happened he gave a description that the murder of his wife was an African American. However, news media took a big role by telling the society of the crime. It turned out the killer of Charles Stuart’s wife was him. The second case was the Rodney King beating; he was an African American, who was brutally attacked by cops. From these cases, Kasinsky touches how news media can affect what information is processed to society. Both police and media have similar ways they project authority.  For example, in these cases, the African Americans are treated with injustice because of wrong information. The case of Rodney King was famed by the media as being more than an isolated case of police brutality. I feel that there are pros and cons of how news media sees how the system of police justice works. Seeing media plays a huge part in society. It can have different texts, shape, and images of crime. I agree how media can start taking the crime investigation more seriously and take the role of police more than police officer doing it.

The Rafter article discusses how Dirty Harry sets the stage for other generic boundaries films involving crime fighting. Also the Dirty Harry film was compared to westerns and how to make the good guy more appealing than the bad guy.  As well there is no real indication of other types of crimes. One of the references Rafter mentions was torture, for example when Harry steps on the leg of the suspect.  Rafter relates how masculinity is a concept in the film. Some of the examples are, men placed in powerful roles to symbolize masculinity over feminist, use of force, and even the main character as seen to be more masculine.  I understand and agree with how the film Dirty Harry has changed many aspects of crime fighting, and also how the masculinity is taken more seriously showing they are fighting for justice.

Dirty Harry connects with the Kasinsky article by how the suspect takes the advantage to beat himself--saying it was the police officer violating his rights. With this scene I related to the case of Rodney King, but in this case the suspect hired someone to beat him up. Even many police officers were made into stereotypes throughout the film.  Almost all of Rafter’s article appeals to the Dirty Harry films as the criminal is very smart, but Harry is the smarter one.  I see how certain dynamics made Dirty Harry to bring forth more films. I also saw how the primary modes come into play with the law enforcement in the media.

Person of Interest is a series that is barely new to TV shows. I watched how the beginning started when two persons came together to fight for justice and protect a person from doing harm to others. The two individuals had worked for the government, and then they were sick of this life and started a new one.  I see within this series how masculinity plays in just as how it’s two men fighting crime. One is the operator who gets the information from a machine. The other individual is a crime fighter who uses his military training. In this series the police department is involved only when the two crime fighters capture the bad guys. I can see how media can play in this series because we can see the police departments are seen as the heroic even though they didn’t do any of the work.