The "Unabomber" vs. the "Nail Bomber": a cross-cultural comparison of newspaper coverage of two murder trials

Abstract

This study compares the newspaper coverage of the murder trials of Theodore Kaczynski (the "Unabomber") and David Copeland (the "Nail bomber"), two similar defendants being tried for similar crimes in two different countries. Both men were found guilty, but the fact that they were diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia became a central element in both trials. One hundred and thirty-three articles from the two countries were compared using a qualitative discourse analysis which found that the dominance of specific narrative frames influenced the structure of the articles. The British coverage privileged the "story of the crime" whereas the US coverage emphasized the "story of the trial". The result was that in the majority of coverage, important contextual information was lost, specifically regarding how mental illness caused these crimes in the first place, as well as how society perceives mentally ill criminals. These results demonstrate the need for more responsible reporting of trials in the hope of encouraging a public dialogue on the relationship between mental illness and criminal justice issues in society.

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