In January 2007 the reasearch company Mori funded research on the publics perception of crime. In one peice of the data they gathered it showed what people think made them believe there is more crimein the area. The top two answers showed that television and newspapers where the two top highest.

Kids and Crime.

BBC News 24 completed a documentary on a series of young people and how crime affected them personally, the encounters with the police and what was the media portrayal of young people. This was the article written on the series www.bbc.co.uk:

In the last of BBC News 24's series on young people, 16 year-old James from Runcorn talks about how crime has affected him personally.

He also discusses his encounters with the police and the media's portrayal of young people.

"I've has knifes pulled on me, my house has been burgled while I was asleep and I've been in many fights.

Crime affects everyone. It happens every night somewhere. You just have to live with it.

One morning my mum came into my room, asking if I' taken the telly from the kitchen. I went downstairs and all my dad's gear was gone.

My PlayStation, MP3 player, computer- they'd taken everything.

It makes you feel scared at first. But then you feel angry. Very angry.

There's a lot of crime in our area.

There's not too much serious crime. But there is a lot of vandalism, drug crime and fighting.

I used to hang around corners with my mates. I started drinking at the weekends too.

I've had a lot of run-ins with the police. On a Friday or Saturday night they come round and just harass us. Sometimes it isn't justified. Sometimes it isn't.

I do think there is a lot of stereotyping of teenagers.

The main stereotype is that we all go around hooded up, going around battering old ladies.

In the papers and the media they are making it out to be worse than it is. It makes the older generation scared of teenagers.

We're not all yobs. We don't all go round mugging old ladies.

To solve teenage crime we need more organisations helping young people to get involved in activities.

A lot of crime just happens because of boredom.

I got involved in the positive future programme back in November last year.

They came round to our estate got to know us and asked us, what we wanted and what we needed.

They arranged activities and trips for us to keep us off the street and develop life skills.

Now things are better for me. I've stopped hanging around with certain people.

I have a job and am sorting my life out."

Within this article i picked out certain points (yellow) made about the teenage crime and the media. It appears that people are scared of teenagers not because they are all bad but because the media portrays them all as being bad.

Media Pressure.

Taking different clips from different articles one common aspect often thought is that the television has become a regular babysitter for young children.

On the website www.troubledteensinfo.com they speak about Media pressure on teenagers and state:

Television has actually become a common babysitter in the house of many parents. Despite your intentions to be able to sift through whatever influences may reach your children, you may not always be there to censor what your teen may be taking in from media such as television commercial or shows. 

Action and violence can be viewed in a number of prime time shows. Teens may get so used to seeing this hostility on camera that it may come to a point where it is not even shocking.

This statement claims that throughout watching violence on a regular bases teenagers become immune to the shock impact of what exactly violence is. This could mean that teenagers are not scared of violence making it easier for teenagers to go out and commit a crime or be violent.