The newspaper Helsingin Sanomat as a source for the criminological historical homicide research

Abstract

This article examines the usefulness of newspaper articles as a source for the criminological research of historical homicides. The analysis is based on the newspaper reports of Finnish homicides published in Helsingin Sanomat newspaper in 1950, 1960 and 1970, and on the case reports of homicides published by the Finnish National Bureau of Investigation (NBI). The newspaper articles are compared to the case reports of NBI both in terms of the number of victims and the reliability of the descriptions. Additionally, both sources are compared to cause-of-death statistics. The results show that when compared to cause-of-death-statistics, the newspaper articles cover almost as many of the victims as the NBI reports. When the newspaper articles are compared to the NBI reports, they cover 94–97 per cent of the number of victims reported in the NBI reports. Some cases of homicide were not covered in the newspaper articles but there were also homicides that were reported in the newspapers but were missing from the NBI reports. The case descriptions were very similar in the newspaper articles and the NBI reports. In case of certain variables, considerably more information could be found in the newspaper articles than in the NBI case reports. Therefore, based on the results of this study, the newspaper articles seem to be a very useful source for the criminological homicide research due to their comprehensiveness and the accuracy of the case descriptions.