Just like a TV show: Public criminology and the media coverage of ‘hunt for Britain’s most wanted man’

The week-long police search for Raoul Moat in Northumbria in northeast England in the summer of 2010 formed a major news event across rolling 24/7 TV stations and newspapers. It is argued that much of the media coverage borrowed heavily from fictional depictions of crime. The boundaries between fictional and news representation are not only blurred by TV shows and movies that adopt a pseudo-verité style imitative of factual reporting but also, the Moat case suggests, by news media that borrow frameworks and formats from fictional media. The paper explores the role of academic commentary in such coverage and the opportunities that this might present for the development of a robust public criminology. It is argued that a better appreciation of the media framing of such events, as outlined in the first part of the paper, is crucial to the development of effective public criminological interventions in media coverage of high-profile criminal incidents.