Introduction

One of the earliest crime reporters in the United Kingdom was Charles Dickens, who started his career as a court reporter at the age of 17 in 1829 – the same year in which the Metropolitan Police was set up by Sir Robert Peel. As noted by Duncan Campbell, the veteran crime reporter and writer, Dickens was both fascinated by and friendly with the new police force, ‘notably detectives, with whose arrival in British fiction he is often credited’ (Campbell, 2016, p 25). Dickens was, according to Campbell, ‘expansive in his admiration of the police, who responded by allowing him unprecedented access’, including ‘travelling into criminal redoubts and spending a night at Bow Street police station’ (Campbell, 2016, p 25). Campbell comments that the newly formed Metropolitan Police force must also have realised that allowing writers and journalists access would have considerable benefits for them; as ‘allowing someone to see how they work often leads to sympathy and understanding’ and might encourage those observers to ‘side with the people who are looking after them and … be tempted to ignore their flaws’ (Campbell, 2016, p 26).

Greer and McLaughlin (2011b) argue that a key component of past research on news media and police relationships is Becker's (1967) concept of the ‘hierarchy of credibility’, a model proposing that, in any society, it is taken for granted that governing elites have the power to ‘define the way things really are’ (Becker, 1967, p 241). Chibnall argued that the journalist was always in an inferior negotiating position, and suggested that, because of that dependence on the police, reporters were ‘obliged to make [their] stories acceptable to [their] personal contacts’ (Chibnall, 1977, p 155).