Viewing and picturing cops. Looking back through the viewfinder. Wanting something to "happen". "Here's a good shot". "They'll think we're boring" -- All the street's a stage. The dramaturgical metaphor. Approaching cops as viewers. The fog of the street -- Prime-time crime and street perceptions. Televisual content. Street perceptions : police responses to the screen -- Ethnography and police work -- Observing the street cop -- Front stage and back stage. The front stage. The back stage. Star power and control. Failed expectations and value judgments -- The (real) mean world. In the same boat. Everyone is innocent. No respect from the audience. The system is against them : statistics as bullshit. Tales of decline. Conclusions : rebels against the public? -- Real cops and mediated cops : can they "get along"?. Perceptions as effects. The struggle continues
Summary
"Policing the Media is an investigation into one of the paradoxes of the mass-mediated age. Issues, events, and people that we "see" most on our television screens are often those we understand the least. David D. Perlmutter examines this issue as it relates to one of the most frequently portrayed groups of people on television: police officers. Policing the Media is his ethnography of a police department, which included riding on patrol with officers and joining the department as a reserve policeman."--Jacket
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 149-157) and index
