Crime: news versus real life

(NATIONAL) As part of our new series “Community Voices”, we’re looking deeper into how reporting on crime and justice affects our local communities. If you’ve ever watched a newscast, you may have noticed that crime news is most often reported in the beginning, or A Block, of a show. But how often is crime news reported compared to other topics of coverage? Extensive research was conducted in that arena in the 80s and 90s, even the 70s, but more recent studies are harder to come by. In fact, one of the most interesting recent studies was conducted by a bunch of high schoolers. James Miller is a media critic and journalism teacher at duPont Manual High School. In 2012, his students found that crime dominated local TV newscasts in Louisville, Kentucky, making up between 28 percent and 37 percent of all news stories. The following year, the numbers went up to between 31 percent and 52 percent of newscasts. https://wfpl.org/media-critic-louisville-tv-news-focuses-crime-above-all/ “Television news, especially, does a lot of crime stories because it’s easy to do,” Miller told VNN. “I knew there was a lot of crime coverage. I did not anticipate that it would be that much of their coverage.” Crime continues to be a frontrunner of coverage, but in real life crime is actually down. Using FBI data, the Pew Research Center found that crime rates have actually fallen for the last 25 years. Violent crime fell 49 percent between 1993 and 2019. Property crime fell 55 percent during that time. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/11/20/facts-about-crime-in-the-u-s/ In 2019, there were a little over 2,100 property crimes per 100,000 people. Violent crimes were at just under 380 violent crimes per 100,000 people. Clearly property crime is much more common than violent crime in real life. What about news? Studies have found that violent crime is reported a lot more frequently. One researcher tracked crime stories in Milwaukee for three weeks and found that 80 percent of the crime stories in the Journal Sentinel were violent offenses. On local news website WTMJ.com, violent crime made up 62 percent of all crime stories. https://scholarship.law.marquette.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5449&context=mulr Some researchers have concluded that people who haven’t experienced crime firsthand rely on media portrayals to understand it, essentially handing over the keys to construct their “crime reality”. https://www.ojp.gov/library/abstracts/news-nowhere-policy-follow-media-and-social-construction-three-strikes-and-youre With violent crime happening to less than half a percent of the overall population, the idea is its prominence in news drives the public perception of a society more violent than it actually is. And people do believe the crime rate is going up, despite the numbers proving otherwise. In more than 80 percent of Gallup studies conducted since the 90s, more than half of U.S. adults said they believed crime had gone up nationally compared to the previous year. In their most recent study, 78 percent of Americans believed crime was increasing nationally, the highest percentage since 1993. https://news.gallup.com/poll/323996/perceptions-increased-crime-highest-1993.aspx What about the perspective of community members who do have experience with crime? That’s coming up next. This story is part of VNN’s Community Voices Project, a new video series designed to covering the full story of crime news and emphasize the narrative of the community when dealing with crime and other community issues.