Summary: The James Bulger Murder Case

This question is based upon the James Bulger Murder case and more specifically the media representation of the murderers Robert Thompson and Jon Venables. In February 1993 aged just two years old James was abducted and later murdered by two 10 year old children. The nation was shook by such events how were young children capable of such a deviant and disgusting act. An event which would change how children were treated in the criminal justice system for good, stating at age 10 children do know the difference between right and wrong and in turn should be treated accordingly with the age of criminal responsibility. (The Conversation, 2018). The case continues to creep up in the media more than 25 years on shows what an impact it had on society

An advantage of this is you can see it in a way that you may not have thought of before however as it’s an opinion the information is not factual and therefore loses its validity. My main source of information will be newspaper articles as my question is media based these will be the most useful, although it is said newspapers often sensationalise and this can be a negative, in this instance it is positive as I want to explore all the various headlines and representations. I also used some journal articles written by various sociologists and phycologists focussing on explanations such as the nature nurture debate these are very useful as they are based upon factual studies and help with explanations of why certain things occur and happen. I will also use images as one of my methods are great for getting data from people who cannot tell you themselves how they are feeling so instead you may analyse body language and facial emotion,

A repeat offender with clear issues regarding children as he has been prosecuted on two occasions for child pornography, abusive images of children and being in possession of a paedophile handbook its clear to see this is not a stable man. The media portrays the killers to have a poor upbringing with neglectful mothers whom were not interested in where their children were and what they were up to and suggests this could be contributing factor to the murder. The media also portrays them to be evil and wicked and undeserving of their million-pound protection and anonymity believes they should show their face for what they have done and face the public backlash. The media also questions if the boys were tried to hard as they were only young at the time and faced a harsh sentencing and treatment in comparison to how other countries would have dealt with it. In conclusion there is wide spread media representation of Thompson and Venables and its profoundly negative and surrounds their age at the time and their current right to remain anonymous. My main form of research was newspaper articles and my issue was that it was all opinionated and sensationalised on such a sensitive topic so it was hard to determine the hard facts and articles