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Lopsided Coverage of Crime
| Article
# : |
19210 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
Date : |
7 / 1991 |
2,618 Words |
| Author
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James Heiser
James Heiser is a media analyst with the Media Research Center
in Alexandria, Virginia. |
Few news topics grab attention as quickly as crime. Unlike politics or foreign affairs, crime stories do not require knowledge of a special lexicon or an interest in the sometimes arcane machinations of faraway countries to divine their meaning. Instead, crime has a horrible familiarity, and people do not need to be told why a sky-rocketing murder rate should interest them.
The media play a vital role in people's perception of crime. After all, it is through the press that Americans gain a knowledge of criminal activity outside their immediate community. Naturally, reporters also deal with issues of justice and punishment, telling the public what has and has not worked in other places. The end result can potentially mean a great deal of media influence in forming public policy, since the press provides much of the context in which the public debates policy and decides on its choices for public offices--from the level of sheriff to president.
If one accepts the premise that the media influence public attitudes and perspectives, it is worth examining just what it is that reporters are telling Americans about crime and whether that reporting is balanced and fair. In an attempt to answer these questions, the author utilized the Media Research Center's data news service to analyze crime coverage on ABC's World News Tonight, the NBC Nightly News, and the CBS Evening News from the beginning of 1990 through early May 1991. Since these three news shows form the primary source of national news for tens of millions of people, their influence with the general public is unparalleled by other media outlets.
In terms of sheer numbers, with 346 reports NBC Nightly News ran the greatest volume of crime stories during the past 16 months, followed by CBS and ABC, at 275 and 241, respectively. Content also varied sharply from one network to another. While stories pertaining to the war on drugs made up approximately 28 percent of ABC's and NBC's crime stores, CBS only devoted 16 percent of its crime-related reports to this topic.
Little airtime for rape
The amount of coverage dedicated by the networks to particular crimes is rather telling. Although reporters often refer to murder and rape as occurring in "epidemic" proportions in the United States, the combined topics received around 25 percent of coverage at CBS and NBC, with ABC coming in a distant third by devoting only 16 percent of its crime stores to these vicious
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