Portraying Animal Cruelty: A Thematic Analysis of Australian News Media Reports on Penalties for Animal Cruelty

SIMPLE SUMMARY: News media is one of the major sources of publicly available information on animal welfare law enforcement. It has previously been established that the media are strong influences of public perceptions. Therefore, it is possible that news reports on animal cruelty offences are shaping public understanding of penalties for animal cruelty. To understand how penalties are portrayed in the media, we collected 71 Australian news articles which reported on penalties for animal cruelty over a 6-month period from 1 June 2019 to 1 December 2019. Using thematic analysis, three themes were identified: (1) laws are not good enough; (2) laws are improving; and (3) reforms are unnecessary. A connection between public perceptions, media reporting and statutory reform efforts to increase maximum penalties is proposed, which potentially could explain why the Australian public appear displeased with the penalties handed down by courts for animal cruelty offences. Further sociological research is required to confirm this theory. ABSTRACT: Media portrayals of animal cruelty can shape public understanding and perception of animal welfare law. Given that animal welfare law in Australia is guided partially by ‘community expectations’, the media might indirectly be influencing recent reform efforts to amend maximum penalties in Australia, through guiding and shaping public opinion. This paper reports on Australian news articles which refer to penalties for animal cruelty published between 1 June 2019 and 1 December 2019. Using the electronic database Newsbank, a total of 71 news articles were included for thematic analysis. Three contrasting themes were identified: (1) laws are not good enough; (2) laws are improving; and (3) reforms are unnecessary. We propose a penalty reform cycle to represent the relationship between themes one and two, and ‘community expectations’. The cycle is as follows: media reports on recent amendments imply that ‘laws are improving’ (theme two). Due to a range of inherent factors in the criminal justice system, harsher sentences are not handed down by the courts, resulting in media report of ‘lenient sentencing’ (theme one). Hence, the public become displeased with the penal system, forming the ‘community expectations’, which then fuel future reform efforts. Thus, the cycle continues.