II. The Press
When the press covered the Ripper killings they used cultural fantasies and Victorian anxieties to their advantage by challenging the police and fascinating the public. They wove a tale of sex, blood, and murder, which would forever change murder in the news. This sensationalism operated on an emotional level, appealing to the morals of the reader. David Sachsman and David Bulla summarize sensationalism in the press in their book Sensationalism: Murder, Mayhem, Mudslinging, Scandals, and Disasters in 19th-Century Reporting: “The core elements of visual sensationalism in the press were in place during the late nineteenth century, with violence and death, crime and punishment, sex and scandal—sometimes lurid, often gratuitous—becoming…