Prepare guidelines for writing a crime report.
1. Know your limits
If someone has been charged with an offence or is about to be charged, you are limited in what you can say so that you do not prejudice the chance of a fair trial. That does not mean that you must say nothing about the crime, but it does mean that you should only report those details which will not be contested in court, keeping out personal opinions.
If no-one has been arrested and charged, you can say much more, always bearing in mind that you could be sued for defamation by anyone involved if you do not stick to the truth.
In many crime stories, once you have told the most important details in your first few paragraphs, you will want to tell the story in chronological order (the order in which things happened). You should already have gathered plenty of information, so now lead your reader or listener step-by-step through the event, explaining things in detail where necessary.
2. Features and background stories
Crime reporting can be dull if all you do is record what has happened and when it happened - dull for you and for your readers or listeners. You can add interest for everyone with background reports and features. These can be done when you have some spare time between news stories or while awaiting further developments in continuing cases.
The simplest background stories for crime reporters are general features about crime. By these we mean features (or current affairs programs) on such things as the rise in burglaries; why psychologists think more rapes happen in hot weather; how people can protect their homes from thieves during the holidays; a new course in self-defence for women.
3. Illustrations
Always try to think of ways of illustrating your crime stories. A good picture is worth a thousand words and a simple diagram can save readers struggling through lines of text of description.
4. Language in writing crime stories
There is a lot of need for care and accuracy when reporting anything to do with crime and the courts. Accuracy must extend all the way through the work, including the words you use when writing your stories, whether for news, features or current affairs.
You must select each word in your story carefully then, when you think you have finished, you must go back to the beginning and read it through, checking again.
The police, criminals and the courts use specialist terms, some of them technical in nature, some of them short forms and some of them slang. You should only ever use them for two reasons: (a) for precision if no alternative is available and (b) for added colour.
5. Legal terms
The exact wording of charges causes most problems for starting journalists. You must always use the correct terms. For example, there is a clear legal distinction between murder and manslaughter. The police, the courts and criminals also use jargon words as a short form. Jargon is specialised language concerned with a particular subject, culture or profession. It is not usually found in the everyday speech of your ordinary readers or listeners. Your readers or listeners may not understand jargon or any words which are not in clear and everyday language.
Many journalists believe that they add drama and life to a story by adding adjectives and adverbs. They refer to "a brutal slaying", as if another slaying can be gentle. They say that ambulances "rushed" to the scene, as if some ambulance drivers dawdle in an emergency.
Adjectives and adverbs usually get in the way of understanding, unless they add to the accuracy of defining something, such as red car. If you choose the right noun, you will not need many adjectives. For example, all screams are high-pitched, all explosions are loud, all battles are fierce, so you do not need the adjective.
TO SUMMARISE:
Write crime stories about people - the criminals, the police and the victims
Keep your writing simple and straightforward; avoid jargon
Make your reports more interesting with appropriate quotes or actuality; attribute all comments and attribute facts where necessary
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