title: How a small-scale panic turns into an unstoppable news wave about mass mugging on the beach
abstract: An incident on a Portuguese beach in 2005 was built and distorted in the national media as an instance of a new crime, replicating known parameters of the Brazilian ‘arrastão’ (mass mugging). This chapter aims to discuss news values, organizational routines, self-referential production standards and bias and prejudice in newsrooms. The chapter suggests that, when in progress, a news wave – built with the contributions of major mass media organizations – is a near unstoppable force and any argume