From Guerin to Gotti: The Evolving Media and Organized Crime
“Italian Criminality,” “the mob” and “La Cosa Nostra” All of these terms share one common thread: Italian ethnicity. The Mafia is an intriguing part of society because of one thing: the media. Italian organized crime archived through the media, shows a society that is changing. A society that was once obsessed with information transitioning to a society obsessed with the sensational. The New York Times offers an abundant amount of archived articles on the Mafia. Dating back to 1856 once can see the tentativeness in organized crime reporting. The Mafia, as the media has, has changed from a force to be reckoned with to a real-life soap opera. American media greatly differs from international media in coverage of organized crime. Veronica Guerin, an Irish reporter killed for her stories on organized crime is a perfect example. The amount of exposure organized crime receives is significant, but in different ways. Surveys dating back to 1979 show that 95 percent of people rely on some sort of media as their primary source of news (Jewkes 75). Both television and newspapers, given the opportunity will take John Gotti’s death and constantly focus on the glitzy and glamour. The 75-limousine motorcade the day of his “funeral” is a microcosm of what American media shows. The people, who control the media, have, above all else, is the draw of evil. Americans love evil and they cannot take their eyes off of it. Evil will always be in the news. Veronica Guerin gets killed in Ireland, but John Gotti in death is a hero.
The information available specifically on organized crime and the media is scarce. Though the media coverage is extensive, the general comparison and research of crime and the media has been virtually ignored. A study in 1981 by Shelley and Atkins looked on trends reported by police, newspapers, and television, then look at the public image of crimes. Their research showed that the movement towards certain criminalization as portrayed by the media did not coincide with police statistics (Jewkes 73). Therefore, public opinion reflected more of what the media saw as crime, than true statistics.
In order to attract readers or viewers, media outlets use four ways of drawing a person in: (Cappon 23)
1.Reporting a-typical crimes more frequently
2.Giving unthinkable, the most heinous crimes the front page
3.Choosing crimes with a vulnerable victim to print first and emphasize
4.Lashing out against Lady Justice
By The New York Times using these four tactics, it can also influence policies. The way newspapers, such as a tabloid like the Daily News compared to The New York Times make a specific influence on how public policy is perceived. If The New York Times continually runs headlines such as “The New Mafia is Deadlier” (1964 Jan. 12) or “The Mafia’s Lawless Practices”(1893 May 22) dated as far back as 1893, the public policies wanted are generally due to the influence of the media on the public. Reading the news and understanding its concepts is difficult. The complexity of how an organized crime such as the aforementioned “The New Mafia is Even Deadlier”, plays right into this concept.
The new Mafia is pure gangsterism. Its operators are sleek, well dressed young men who drive high-powered cars, live in lavish modern apartments, are seen in expensive hotels and bars and in general throw their newly found money very carelessly.
This part of the article, found towards the middle is comparing and contrasting the “Old Mafia” versus the “New Mafia.” By itself, it does not read into the headline too well. But the sub-headline reads “The old Sicilian gangsters had a rural and romantic flavor. Now they have moved into the cities-and grown murderous. Here is a report from the Mafia’s capital” (New Mafia 1964)
However, articles such as these are few and far between in current newspapers. In fact, 1965 was the last time a reporter took an in-depth look at Italian organized crime with a scholarly approach. Over the past twenty years mobsters and the like have been charged and imprisoned on a regular basis. There must have been a hard news, investigative story on someone like Al Capone or Albert Anastasia. But the media ran scared from these men. This could be due to two reasons: organized crime fails to grab the attention it once did, or the in depth research and reporting necessary to give a 360 degree view of organized crime is not profitable. The end product will not justify the means.
Take a recent article from The New York Times in 2002.
“The hoary adage claiming clothes make the man was taken out of mothballs last week as the news media worked up an elegiac frenzy over the death of John Gotti, the self styled Dapper Don. True the obituaries following Gotti’s deathâÂ?¦fulfilled their responsibility to inform the readers that Mr. Gotti had a long rap sheet of brutal crimes. But the gruesome salient details tended to be buried in the 10th paragraph. I was in the leads that the readers encountered the juicier, if less obviously relevant, fact that Mr. Gotti was a snappy dresserâÂ?¦”(Wonder Land 2002)
As our country shifts to a fast paced, celebrity obsessed society, so too does the model of journalism. The old model had four components:
First was that public agenda was owned by the government. A good early organized crime example of this is Boss Tweed in New York. Tammany Hall taking over the city controlled every part of public life. The police turned their heads to most forms of crime. Tweed, among other organized crime groups would pay off police officers. This also means that these officials controlled the media as well. When the media looked at government, they saw in essence, their boss (Nelli 1979 pg. 102). The newspapers were public relations papers, and in their eyes, the government was always proactive and the elected officials were never corrupt.
Second, journalist did not talk to regular people. They would speak to one of two people representing the interests of a specific group. For example, The New York Times wants to talk about an Italian-American parade put on by business-owners of a certain block in the Bronx, NY. The reporter should go to the Italian-American Civil Liberties Union. The Colombo crime family runs the organization. The reporter would talk to Joseph Colombo-not because he is the head of the organization, but more so because the shop owners were afraid to speak.
Third is the tone of the articles in The New York Times. Any stories that published were strictly regulated and enforced. The daily newspapers gravitated towards the positive. Journalists were pawns of organized crime. For example, there was “gossip columnist” Walter Winchell of the New York Evening Graphic. He went to the Mafia owned clubs, drank with the best, and ate with the best. He is an early version of the Daily News gossip columnists Rush and Molloy. Winchell was lucky; there were good characters in organized crime during his time period to write about. He hung out at Sherman Billingsley’s Stork Club during the 1940s, and always sat at table 50 in the Club Room. There was a Winchellburger on the menu. Interestingly enough, The National Enquirer newspaper was originally bankrolled by a Mafia Godfather, according to the son of its founder, who promised that the tabloid would not truly investigate the “activities” of the New York mob (Blum 1993). Winchell liked to taunt and ridicule J Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI in the 1960’s, becoming one of the first to hint at Hoover’s sexual orientation. In an article Winchell used for his column, he cited an interview a woman did with Hoover, and entitled the article; “Hoover: He Always Gets his Man, But he Never Found a Woman.”
On the opposite end is Veronica Guerin, a middle aged Irish journalist killed in 1996 by gangsters who disapproved of her stories. A businesswoman first, she began to concentrate on crime reporting in 1994. Journalistically, she had numerous contacts in the Irish police force. Unlike other journalists though, she developed contacts within the organized crime community. The same men she would report and investigate, were the men who gave negative information and tips about rival gangs. One hundred and fifty arrests are credited to her stories. Guerin infiltrated the inner-workings of Dublin, Ireland’s top gangsters and their link to the drug business. Very bluntly, Guerin would walk up to the door of major players in Ireland’s drug trade and ask, “are you selling drugs?” Evans 1997 pp. 11).
One of her unflattering stories, for example, reported that a gangster named Martin Cahill had fathered children with his wife and his sister-in-law. Gunshots were fired through her living room window, and three months later she was shot in the leg. The former accountant went to the door of John Gilligan; Dublin’s biggest gangster in the drug trade-Guerin was brutally beaten. Gilligan then threatened to rape and kill her six-year-old son as well as her. This was risky, uncharted territory, lying out in public, criminals who escaped law enforcement and justice. In effect, she and her newspaper, The Sunday Independent, changed the rules of what was considered fair game in the coverage of organized crime. Lise Hand, a journalist, describes Guerin in a positive light, and what the slain reporter’s idea of an organized crime story was all about.”Inside you that makes you want to believe that there still exists a right and wrong, that decency will somehow triumph in the end” (13).
Where are these heroic reporters investigating organized crime in America? There is very little investigative journalism, and what is done is about celebrities. Those that commit crimes are not exposed and punished, but rather idolized. Jayson Blair of The New York Times is a grat example of a journalist trying to be investigative, yet makes up stories and lies that get on the front page. The most recent, groundbreaking investigative story like Veronica Guerrin’s was The Washington Post’s Watergate story from Woodward and Bernstein.
On April 23rd 1891 The New York Times ran the headline “It looks like a Mafia murder”. John W. Goff, an Assistant District Attorney in New York proclaimed to The Times in 1893, “while mafite methods are still in vogue, I do not think that any mafite tribunal has ever existed in New York.” The Times jumped on this story using the headline “Mafia’s Lawless Practices, John W. Goff thinks in time they will be gone here.” In 1910, the newspaper again, playing on people’s fears ran a small piece entitled “Killed by Black Handers” All articles were careful to make a reference to the Mafia within the first two paragraphs. Dating as far back as the mid 1800’s the obsession with the Mafia began, and continues today.
Peter Gotti in 2004 stood on trial for racketeering. The New York Times again, jumped on the story.
Not so long ago in this city the Gotti surname carried clout, as in one to the head. It said give me your money. IT said maybe you did not hear me, give me your money. It said whack, thank you for your money. No question, back then the Gotti bloodlines dominated the sixth borough of Thug Dom. John Gotti, the patriarch and the head of the Gambino crime family, would order murder the way the rest of us ordered lunch (11/20/2004)
John Gotti wanted to be portrayed in a certain light. : Well-dressed, well liked, intelligent, powerful and feared. In fact, most high profile members of crime families were savvy businessmen. John Gotti was the “Dapper Don” or “Teflon Don”. However, Peter Gotti used an interesting defense-he had low-intelligence, therefore he could never plan the murder of another person, especially Sammy “The Bull” Gravano. The headline read” Name is Gotti, but principle is Peter” As he was lead way after being convicted Peter Gotti looked to the reporters outside the New York City courthouse and said “Gotti’s are easy to convict. All you have to have is the name.”
When John Gotti died in 2002, the pomp and circumstance was relative to that of a statesman. Although the Catholic Church would not give him a mass, his coffin rode through the streets. One of the women who lined the streets told the Wall Street Journal “I believe he is in heaven. He died in a state of grace.” Daniel Henninger, commentating on his funeral:
John Gotti, local hero is in the category of men who glory in living outside the rule of law, all the while pretending to inhabit the culture of civilization – dressing up in fancy Italian suits and refusing to subject themselves to any law other than their own code, which is to say, barbarism.”(Wonderland 2002)
“Italian Criminality,” “the mob” and “La Cosa Nostra” All of these terms share one common thread: Italian ethnicity. The Mafia is an interesting part of society because of one thing: the media. Italian organized crime archived through the media, shows a society that is changing. A society that was once obsessed with information transitioning to a society obsessed with the sensational. The New York Times offers an abundant amount of archived articles on the Mafia. Dating back to 1856 once can see the tentativeness in organized crime reporting. The Mafia, as the media has, has changed from a force to be reckoned with to a real-life soap opera. American media greatly differs from international media in coverage of organized crime. Veronica Guerin, an Irish reporter killed for her stories on organized crime is a perfect example. The amount of exposure organized crime receives is significant, but in different ways. Surveys dating back to 1979 show that 95 percent of people rely on some sort of media as their primary source of news (Jewkes 75). Both television and newspapers, given the opportunity will take John Gotti’s death and constantly focus on the glitzy and glamour. The 75-limousine motorcade the day of his “funeral” is a microcosm of what American media shows. The people, who control the media, have, above all else, is the draw of evil. Americans love evil and they cannot take their eyes off of it. Evil will always be in the news. Veronica Guerin gets killed in Ireland, but John Gotti in death is a hero.
