off balance: youth, race & crime in the news...enforcement, national council on crime and...

OFF BALANCE:YOUTH, RACE & CRIME IN THE NEWS

For a fair and effectiveyouth justice system

Prepared byLori Dorfman, DrPH

Berkeley Media Studies Group,Public Health Institute

Vincent Schiraldi,Justice Policy Institute

April 2001

OFF BALANCE:YOUTH, RACE & CRIME IN THE NEWS

www.buildingblocksforyouth.org

This is the fourth in an ongoing series of analyses published by Building Blocks for Youth, amulti-organizational initiative whose goal is to promote a fair and effective juvenile justice system.In January, 2000, Building Blocks issued its first report, “The Color of Justice” which found thatyouth of color in California were more than eight times as likely to be incarcerated by adultcourts as White youth, for equally serious crimes. Building Blocks’ comprehensive nationalstudy, “And Justice for Some”, reported that youth of color are treated more severely than Whiteyouth at each stage of the justice system, even when charged with the same offenses. In October,2000 Building Blocks’ third report, “Youth Crime, Adult Time” an in-depth study of youthprosecuted as adults in 18 of the largest jurisdictions in the country, found racial disparitiessimilar to the earlier reports, and raised serious concerns about the fairness and appropriatenessof the process.

The initiative has five major components:

(1) Research on the disparate impact of the justice system on minority youth, on the effects of newadult-court transfer legislation in the states, and on the privatization of juvenile justice facilitiesby for-profit corporations;

(2) Analyses of decisionmaking at critical points in the justice system, including arrest, detention,adjudication, and disposition;

(3) Direct advocacy on behalf of youth in the justice system, particularly on issues thatdisproportionately affect youth of color such as conditions of confinement in jails, prisons, andjuvenile facilities; access to counsel and adequacy of representation in juvenile court; and "zerotolerance" and other issues relating to school suspensions and expulsions;

(4) Constituency-building among African-American, Latino, and Native-American and other minorityorganizations, as well as organizations in the medical, mental health, legal, law enforcement,child welfare, civil rights, human rights, religious, victim's rights, and domestic violence areas, atthe national, state, and local levels;

(5) Development of communications strategies to provide timely, accurate, and relevant informationto these constituencies, public officials, policymakers, the media, and the public.

The partners in the initiative are the Youth Law Center, American Bar Association Juvenile JusticeCenter, Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, Juvenile Law Center, Minorities in LawEnforcement, National Council on Crime and Delinquency and Pretrial Services Resource Center.

The initiative is supported by the federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Preventionand the Bureau of Justice Assistance, the Annie E. Casey, Ford, Mott, MacArthur, Rockefeller andWilliam T. Grant foundations, and the Center on Crime, Communities & Culture of the OpenSociety Institute. This project was supported by award No. 98-JN-FX-K003 awarded by the Officeof Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department ofJustice. Points of view or opinions in this document are those of the authors and do not necessarilyrepresent the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice or the supportingfoundations.

http://www.buildingblocksforyouth.org

Youth, Race & Crime in the News 3

INTRODUCTION

Race and the Juvenile Justice System

In January 2000, the Building Blocks forYouth initiative issued its first report, TheColor of Justice, which found that youth ofcolor in California were more than eighttimes as likely to be incarcerated by adultcourts as White youth for equally seriouscrimes.1 Building Blocks’ comprehensivenational study, And Justice for Some,reported that youth of color are treatedmore severely than White youth at eachstage of the justice system, even whencharged with the same offenses.2 InOctober, 2000, Building Blocks’ thirdreport, Youth Crime, Adult Time, an in-depth study of youth prosecuted as adultsin 18 of the largest jurisdictions in thecountry, found racial disparities similar tothe earlier reports, and raised seriousconcerns about the fairness andappropriateness of the process.3

These reports have built upon a growingbody of research showing that youth ofcolor receive disparate treatment inAmerica’s juvenile justice system. In themost recent reporting to the Office ofJuvenile Justice and DelinquencyPrevention of the US Department ofJustice, every state but one that reporteddata found disproportionate confinementof minority youth.4 More than two-thirdsof youths confined in America are minorityyouth, even though minorities make uponly about one-third of America’s youthpopulation.

In a seminal meta-analysis conducted byresearchers Carl Pope and RichardFeyerherm, two-thirds of the carefullyconstructed studies of state and local

juvenile justice systems they analyzedfound that there was a “race effect” atsome stage of the juvenile justice processthat affected outcomes for minorities forthe worse.5 Their research suggested that“the effects of race may be felt at variousdecision points, they may be direct orindirect, and they may accumulate asyouth continue through the system.” Theysuggest that the race effect in the juvenilejustice system may be more common thanin the adult system.

There is evidence that stereotyping isaffecting the treatment young peopleexperience at the hands of the juvenilejustice system. According to a 1998analysis by University of Washingtonresearchers, court reports prepared priorto sentencing by probation officersconsistently give more negative portrayalsof Black youth even when controlling foroffense behavior and prior record, thusleading to harsher sentencingrecommendations for Blacks.6 ProfessorGeorge Bridges concluded that “Thechildren would be charged with the samecrime, be the same age and have the samecriminal history, but the different waysthey were described was just shocking.”

More Fear, Less Crime, Fear of MinorityCrime

Despite sharp declines in youth crime, thepublic expresses great fear of its ownyoung people. Although violent crime byyouth in 1998 was at its lowest point inthe 25-year history of the National CrimeVictimization Survey7, 62% of pollrespondents felt that juvenile crime wason the increase.8 In the 1998/99 schoolyear, there was less than a one-in-two-million chance of being killed in a school

Off Balance4

in America, yet 71% of respondents to anNBC/Wall Street Journal poll felt that aschool shooting was likely in theircommunity. Despite a 40% decline inschool associated violent deaths between1998 and 1999 and declines in otherareas of youth violence, respondents to aUSA Today poll were 49% more likely toexpress fear of their schools in 1999 thanin 1998.9

This response is not simply an artifact ofhighly publicized school shootings. A 1996CBS/New York Times poll, taken prior toany of the highly publicized schoolshootings, showed that 84% ofrespondents believed juvenile crime wason the increase. In a 1996 California poll,60% of respondents reported believingthat juveniles were responsible for mostviolent crime, when youths were actuallyresponsible for about 13% of violent crimethat year.10

In an environment in which fear of youthcrime and actual crime are so out of sync,policies affecting young people are boundto be influenced. Since 1992, 47 stateshave made their juvenile justice systemsmore punitive by eroding confidentialityprotections or making it easier to tryjuveniles as adults. For example, crime byyouth fell more during the 1980’s and1990’s than adult crime in California, yetCalifornia voters overwhelmingly passedproposition 21 in 2000, requiring thatyouth as young as age 14 be automaticallytried as adults for certain offenses.11 Inone estimate, more than 200,000 youthswere prosecuted in adult court in Americain 1998.12 Some of the policy changes mayhave been in response to the jump injuvenile homicides with guns from themid-1980’s to the early 1990’s but other

categories of juvenile crime did notincrease during that period, and thepublic had unrealistic perceptions aboutcrime long before those increases.

At the same time as Americans are fearfulof youth crime, they are more likely toexaggerate the threat of victimization byminorities. Twice as many WhiteAmericans believe they are more likely tobe victimized by a minority than a White,despite the fact that Whites are actuallythree times more likely to be victimized byWhites than by minorities.13

What Is The News Media’s Role?

More than 70 years ago Walter Lippmannwrote a now-classic work, Public Opinion.14

In that book he described the impossibilityof knowing through direct experienceeverything that it was necessary to knowto function as a citizen in our moderndemocracy. Instead, Lippmann explained,we depend on “pictures in our heads,”many of them delivered by the newsmedia, to tell us about the world. Ourdecisions about how to behave and how toconstruct our society have to be based onthose pictures, Lippmann believed,because the world was too vast toexperience personally.

The public depends on the media for itspictures of crime. Three quarters (76%) ofthe public say they form their opinionsabout crime from what they see or read inthe news, more than three times thenumber who state that they get theirprimary information on crime frompersonal experience (22%).15 In a LosAngeles Times poll, 80% of respondentsstated that the media’s coverage of violentcrime had increased their personal fear of


being a victim.16 A 1998 report by PublicAgenda found that daily TV news viewerswere more likely to think that crime anddrugs were Baltimore’s number oneproblem than were those who watch thenews less frequently (67% vs. 42%).17

Despite declining crime rates in Baltimore,one woman there stated, “I get morenervous and worried the more I see, so theless I see, the less crime I would feel isgoing on out there.”18

These survey results are consistent withcommunications research finding that thenews media largely determine what issueswe collectively think about, how we thinkabout them, and what kinds of policyalternatives are considered viable.19 Newsportrayals of juvenile justice issues aresignificant for how they influence policymakers and the public regarding whatshould be done to ensure public safety.Issues are not considered by the publicand policy makers unless they are visible,and they are not visible unless the newsbrings them to light.

Most people have little or no personalexperience with juvenile crime becauseadults commit most of the crime in thenation: about 89% of all crimes cleared byarrest are committed by adults.20

The public depends on the media evenmore for its pictures of crime done by or tominority youth, since most of the publichas no direct personal experience withcrime by minority youth. Eighty-sixpercent of White homicide victims arekilled by other Whites, and overall, Whitesare three times as likely to be victimizedby other Whites as by minorities. Thechances that a White adult will be thevictim of a crime by a Black youth are

quite small. Consequently, America’sdominant voting and opinion setting block– its White adult population – depends onthe news to explain minority youth crimeto them.

The news media should help as manycitizens as possible make sense of theworld around them. But does the currentapproach to covering youth and crimemaximize public understanding? Whatinformation on youth and crime does theAmerican public get from the news? Inview of the powerful impact news coverageof crime has on public opinion and thedependence of most Americans on thenews media for depictions of crime, thereare several important questions we haveabout the accuracy of the pictureAmericans are receiving from the newsmedia:

1. Does news coverage reflect actual crimetrends?

2. How does news coverage depictminorities and crime?

3. Does news coverage disproportionatelydepict youth of color as perpetrators ofcrime?

The remainder of this study will seek toanswer these three questions.

METHODS

Our objective was to compile and examinethe best social science that has analyzedthe content of crime news to answer thequestions above, particularly analysesthat included examinations of race andyouth. This report assesses andconsolidates the findings from thosecontent analyses on crime news.

Issues are not considered by the public and policy makers unless they are visible, and they are not visibleunless the news brings them to light.

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Collecting the Universe of Studies onCrime News

To identify scientific content analyses ofcrime news, we conducted searches ofcriminal justice and communicationsdatabases for articles containing thefollowing key words: “content analysis,”“crime,” “media,” “race,” “violence,” and/or“youth.” Communications and criminaljustice databases included the CriminalJustice Abstracts, SocioFile, the MissouriSchool of Journalism’s study of Race &the Media, the DialogWeb(TM) database,MERLIN’s OVID database (the CurrentContents and Periodical Abstractsdatabases) and the JSTOR online database.Phyllis Schultze, Information Specialist,Rutgers Law Library, conducted the initialsearch of the criminal justice databases.We augmented the electronic search withpertinent articles cited in the references ofthese articles that had not turned up inour keyword searches.

Analyzing the Universe of Studies onCrime News

The search yielded 146 articles. Theauthors, with the assistance of Universityof Missouri journalism graduate studentMaria Len-Rios and Justice Policy Instituteintern Alea Brown, read, abstracted andcategorized all 146 articles for theirrelevance to the issues of youth, crime andrace. Thirty-six of the articles werenewspaper accounts or reports that didnot offer primary data analyses. We elim-inated these articles from our analysis.

Level 1 and Level 2 studies. Our firsttask was to determine whether the studypresented original data on news content.We also determined whether the study was

published in a peer-reviewed journal. Wefocused our attention on the 65 articlespublished in peer-reviewed journalsbecause we believed these studies wouldprovide us with evidence put through themost rigorous scrutiny. These articleswere the best that social science has tooffer on the topic of race, crime, youth andthe news. We dubbed these “Level 1”studies.

The remaining 45 articles includedempirical analyses published byorganizations or researchers without thebenefit of peer-review. While these articlesdo not offer the same level of confidence asthe peer-reviewed studies, we believedthat the findings warrant examination anddiscussion here. We called these “Level 2”studies.

Several of the 110 Level 1 and Level 2studies were ultimately eliminated fromour analysis because they were primarilyabout single events (e.g., O.J. Simpson),“reality” shows which we deemedentertainment rather than news21, mediaeffects, photographs only, non-US news,or topics other than analyses of generalnews that included crime news content.Ultimately, 33 studies were eliminated forone of the reasons listed above (seeAppendix 1). Our conclusions are basedon the findings synthesized from theremaining 77 published studies.

We also excluded from our analysis theseveral books that have been written onthe subject of race and crime because wewanted to focus on studies that had beenpeer-reviewed. However, in the case ofstudies of youth depictions, because therewere so few studies, we wanted to includeany available analyses. Therefore, we


included findings from studies reported inbooks when the methodology was welldescribed and/or we could contact theauthors with questions. We note in thetext if the study we are discussing is froma book.

Most studies analyze the type of crimereported in the news and thecharacteristics of that coverage. Somestudies compare the type and frequency ofcrime coverage to crime statistics. A fewstudies compare crime coverage to publicopinion about crime. Several studiestested media effects (e.g., whether newsstories changed attitudes or opinions ofaudiences) but did not analyze content,though several of these studies arereferred to in the body of the reportbecause of the insight they offer as weinterpret the various content analyses.Appendix 1 lists all 110 Level 1 and Level2 studies. A complete bibliography isavailable in the References. 22

Comparison of news content to crimestatistics. Once we had summarized andcondensed the findings about newscontent, we compared those findings tocrime trends reported by law enforcementagencies. For example, if studies of thenews showed an ever larger proportion ofthe “news hole” — the amount ofnewspaper or television time devoted tonews — occupied by violent crime, wasthat simply a reflection of actual increasesin violent crime during the same timeperiod? According to the best scientificanalyses of media content, is the newsproviding an accurate reflection of crimetrends? We ascertained whether thestudies themselves made the relevantcomparisons to crime trends, and, if theydid not, we collected the appropriate crime

data to compare to the content of thenews. We collected the relevant criminaljustice data from the Federal Bureau ofInvestigation and US Department ofJustice and state or local law enforcementsurveys, where applicable.23

FINDINGS

The studies we surveyed covered a rangeof media24 — local and network television,newspapers, and broadcast and printnews magazines — from 1910 through2001. Most studies analyzed newspapers(N=53), followed by local television (N=26).Twenty studies analyzed networktelevision news. Only three studiesanalyzed print news magazines and twoanalyzed the content of TV news magazineprograms. (The numbers add to more than77 because several studies analyzed morethan one medium).

Overall, the studies taken togetherindicate that depictions of crime in thenews are not reflective of either the rate ofcrime generally, the proportion of crimewhich is violent, the proportion of crimecommitted by people of color, or theproportion of crime committed by youth.The problem is not the inaccuracy ofindividual stories, but that the cumulativechoices of what is included — or notincluded — in the news presents thepublic with a false picture of higherfrequency and severity of crime than isactually the case.

Furthermore, the studies show that crimeis depicted as a series of distinct eventsunrelated to any broader context. Moststudies that examine race and crime findthat the proportion of crime committed bypeople of color (usually African Americans)is over-reported and that Black victims are

Overall, the studies taken together indicate that depictions of crime in the news are not reflective of either therate of crime generally, the proportion of crime which is violent, the proportion of crime committed by peopleof color, or the proportion of crime committed by youth.

Off Balance8

under-represented. Other studies find thatcrimes committed by people of color arecovered in proportion with arrest rates,but that crimes committed by Whites areundercovered.

Finding #1: The news media reportcrime, especially violent crime, outof proportion to its actualoccurrence.

Studies of newspapers and televisionidentified three clear patterns. First, andmost consistent over time, is thatnewspapers and television emphasizeviolent crime. Second, the more unusualthe crime, the greater the chance it will becovered. Third, the rate of crime coverageincreased while real crime rates dropped.While all media emphasize violence intheir news, newspapers do it to a lesserdegree than network television, whichdoes it less than local TV news.25 There arefewer studies of Spanish languagenewspapers and television news broadcastin the US, but those that exist alsodemonstrate an emphasis on crimeconsistent with studies of English-language US news.26,27,28,29,30

Violent Crime Dominates CrimeCoverage. Crime is often the dominanttopic on local television news31, networknews32, and TV newsmagazines.33 Onnetwork newscasts, crime and violence arecovered more than any other topic on thenews. Crime is a newspaper staple as well.When the news media cover crime, theycover little other than violent crime.34

While crimes against property occupymost of law enforcement’s attention,violent crimes occupy televisionproducers, newspaper editors, andreporters’.35 In general, TV crime reporting

is the inverse of crime frequency. That is,murder is reported most often on the newsthough it happens the least.36 As wediscuss later in this report, this is notsurprising since homicide is a crime withmuch greater consequences than propertycrimes and embodies many aspectsreporters seek in a “good story.”

The more unusual the crime orviolence, the more likely it is to becovered. In some studies, the number ofvictims was the strongest predictor ofwhether or not a crime would be covered.37

Other factors that increase the likelihoodof a homicide being reported in the newsare multiple victims, multiple offenders,an unusual method, a White victim, achild, elderly, or female victim, oroccurrence in an affluent neighborhood.38,39

For example, a study of five years ofhomicide coverage in the Los AngelesTimes from 1990 through 1994 found thatthe least common homicides received themost coverage.40 That is, homicidesbetween strangers and interracialhomicides received more coverage when,in reality, most murder victims in LosAngeles County were killed by someonethey knew and someone of the same race.

The disproportionate coverage of homicidewas also prevalent in television news. Forexample, Rocky Mountain Media Watch’sone-day snapshot of local television newsin 55 markets around the country onFebruary 26, 1997, the Kaiser FamilyFoundation analyses of national televisionnews in 1996, and Gilliam et al.’s studiesof the evening news on KABC-TV in LosAngeles from 1993 to 1994 wereremarkably consistent. All three foundthat homicides made up more than aquarter of the crimes reported on the


evening news (27% - 29%) while from one-to two-tenths of one percent of all arrestsin those years was for a homicide. On oneLos Angeles local station this amounted to14 homicide stories for every homicidecommitted.41 As the authors note, “theseriousness and newsworthiness ofmurder cannot be denied, but the level of‘distortion’ is impressive.” Other violentcrime categories were also portrayed out ofproportion to their actual share of arrests.

Crime coverage has increased while realcrime rates have fallen. Overall the rateof crime coverage in the news did notreflect crime trends. For example, one ofthe few studies of newsmagazines foundthat increases in crime reporting in Timemagazine reflected increases in crimeduring 1975 and 1979.42 But it also founda 55% increase in crime coverage in Timefrom 1979 through 1982 when the actualcrime rate increased by only 1%.

On network television news, crimecoverage doubled from 1992 to 1993, from830 to 1,698 stories. This made crime theleading TV news topic for the first timesince 1987. The coverage continued rising,reaching 1,949 stories in 1994 and 2,574in 1995, more than triple the totalrecorded in 1992. Crime news peaked in1995 primarily because of the O.J.Simpson trial coverage, but never droppedto its pre-O.J. levels.43 From 1990 through1999, Center for Media and Public Affairsresearchers catalogued 135,449 stories onABC, CBS, and NBC evening newscasts.Crime was the biggest topic of the decadewith 14,289 crime stories. Crime newsdeclined for the first time in 2000,dropping 39% from the previous year, butremains the third most frequent topic onnetwork news.44

Local television news has not beenmonitored for as long as the networks.However, several studies done in the mid-1990’s by Rocky Mountain Media Watch(RMMW) provide similar evidence for localTV news.45 RMMW volunteers collect latenight news broadcasts from local TVstations on the same night around thecountry. All RMMW studies show highlevels of crime reporting, so much so thatRMMW created a measure dubbed the“mayhem index” to account for local TVnews attention to crime, violence anddisaster coverage. In every year examined,crime stories dominate the local TVnewscasts, and violent crime, particularlymurder, dominates the crime stories. Forexample, in 1997, RMMW found thatcrime topped the list of subjects coveredon local evening news, was one-third of alllocal news stories, and appeared threetimes as much as the next closest subject.RMMW suggests that crime coverage notonly persists out of proportion to actualcrime, but that it also uses up time thatcould be devoted to other important topics.

The Kaiser Family Foundation (1998) hasrecently begun tracking news agendas,with an interest in health issues. Itsstudies of network and local TV news in1996 found that crime was the mostcommon story on local news. Of the17,000 local news stories broadcastduring a three month period, the numberof violent crime stories broadcast, 2,035,was almost double the number of healthstories (1,265), three times the number offoreign news reports (630), and four timesthe number of education stories (501). Incontrast to the local news findings, crimeranked sixth on the network news agendaduring the same period.46

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Summary & Implications

The news media has proven to be a poorvehicle for discerning crime trends. Whilethere was a 1% increase in crime from1979 to 1982, crime coverage in Timeincreased by 55% during that timeperiod.47 Nationally, crime dropped by 20%from 1990 to 1998 while network TVshowed an 83% increase in crime news.48

While homicide coverage was increasingon network news—473% increase from1990 to 1998—homicides were down32.9% from 1990 to 1998.49 (See Graphs 1& 2).

Of course, homicide is a far more seriouscrime than car theft or robbery. It deservesserious attention from journalists — it’sappropriate to report more intensely onmurders than vandalism. Yet the

continued focus on the most seriouscrimes leaves the public with anincomplete picture. Additionally, whetherit is more newsworthy or not, reportingmore frequently on a category of crime(murder) that is declining is likely to leadthe public to form erroneous beliefs aboutcrime trends.

Furthermore, if the most unusualhomicides get the only news attention,audiences will assume those are thetypical homicides, or that they are moreprevalent than they actually are. Based onthe news, the public may (and indeed,does, according to public opinionsurveying) assume that interracialmurders by strangers are typical, yet thatis not the case in the US. The repetition ofthe unusual has consequences for howaudiences interpret crime. The steady diet

0%

100%

PercentChange

Graph 1: Nationally, crime dropped by 20% from 1990 to 1998 while network television

showed an 83% increase in crime news.

Source: Center for Media & Public Affairs,2000a, US DOJ 2000

National

83%

-20%

crime drop

Crime news increase


of violent crime, coupled with the absenceof nonviolent crime and general context,means that the rare crime looks like thenormal crime; homicide is the prototypicalcrime in the news. Further, increasedcoverage of crime in general andhomicides in particular while crime andhomicides are declining gives the viewingpublic a skewed view of crime trends. Webelieve this explains, to a large extent, whythe public consistently overestimates therate of crime.

Criticism of the news for its emphasis onviolent crime is certainly not new.Periodically, pundits, critics, communitygroups, and others bemoan the “if itbleeds, it leads” edict that seems to govern

local TV news in particular. Even somewho produce the news claim to hate themandate, sometimes feeling they have nochoice. “Yes, the crime reporting aroundthe local stations is disproportionate toreality,” KTLA-TV news director DavidGoldberg told the Los Angeles Times. “Ithelps drive the fear in our communities.You would think [Los Angeles] was one ofthe most dangerous places on earth. Butunfortunately, newsrooms find crime veryeasy to cover. It’s their way of not havingto work hard.”50

Violence stories are easy to do and readilyavailable, perfect for a deadline drivennewsroom. They are often about life anddeath — “good stories,” full of drama and

0%

500%

473%

-32.9%

PercentChange

Graph 2: From 1990-1998, homicide coverage was increasing on network news by 473% while homicides were

down 32.9%

Source: Center for Media & Public Affairs,2000a, US DOJ 2000

National homicide

drop

Homicide news

increase

-100%

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emotion — that keep audiences attentive.All of these reasons contribute to theconsistency of the findings in the studiesof news.

Another important factor in the currentemphasis on crime coverage is the adventof 24-hour news. Stations have a lot oftime to fill, and crime coverage is easy,cheap and available. In his book critiquingroutine crime coverage, former crimereporter and editor David Krajiceksuggests that a “Murdock effect” pushedcrime coverage further into thesensational. During the 1980’s, stationsowned by media mogul Rupert Murdockbegan broadcasting sensationalistic news-like programs such as “A Current Affair.”The programs pursued topics in a mannermost traditional news outlets eschewed.But, Krajicek argues, in the late 1980’s,mainstream news outlets began to cite “ACurrent Affair” as a news source, allowingthem to report on celebrity scandals andother crime that had previously beenreserved for the tabloids. Now, accordingto Krajicek, the networks included in theirbroadcasts stories that they previouslywould not have investigated or reported.As local and network TV news repeatedlyaired tape from shows like “A CurrentAffair,” Krajicek maintains, the “definitionof legitimate news had changed.”51

Finding #2: The news media reportcrime as a series of individual eventswithout adequate attention to itsoverall context.

Presumably, if the emphasis on crime issatisfying viewers’ desire to know about it,then print and broadcast journalistsshould also be explaining it. Yet most

crime news is episodic, describing crimeevents as if they are isolated from largersocial, historical, or environmentalcontexts. Studies spanning almost 100years — 1910 to 2000 — are consistent intheir findings that news reports describewhat happened with little reporting aboutwhy the crime and violence happened orwhat could be done about it.52 In oneexample, researchers found that thenation’s dominant news magazinesportrayed the race riots of the late 1960’sas “random, unpredictable, and most ofall, unjustified” events outside a largersocial context53, despite KernerCommission findings that there weremany identifiable — and justifiable —reasons for the riots.54 Paul Klite of RMMWnotes that local TV news covers all theelements of the crime: the search, thescene, the arrest, and the trial, withdramatic video of flashing lights, yellowcrime-scene tape and grieving relatives,but little of the “context, consequences,patterns or solutions that surround theevents.”55 The lack of explanations forcrime and violence complicates theproblem of exaggerated frequency in newsstories by leaving the impression that theviolence is inevitable.

Finding #3: The news media,particularly television news, undulyconnect race and crime, especiallyviolent crime.

Several studies examine race in crimenews, but the findings are lessstraightforward. People of color aredepicted more often in crime stories thanin non-crime stories,56 but not all studiesdifferentiate between victims andperpetrators. Some count depictions of


people of color; others don’t count howoften perpetrators or victims of colorappear but analyze the characteristics ofthe portrayals and the circumstances inwhich they appear. Other studies examinehow much attention was paid to people ofcolor in crime stories by counting thenumber of words in stories withperpetrators or victims of color. Thesedifferent research approaches make itmore difficult to draw conclusions acrossstudies.

Nonetheless, there is some consistentevidence that a disproportionate numberof perpetrators on the news are people of

color, especially African Americans.African American perpetrators aredepicted as dangerous andindistinguishable as a group, they appearmore frequently in crime news storiesthan Whites, and interracial crime iscovered disproportionately. The strongestevidence shows that people of color, againprimarily African Americans, areunderrepresented as victims in crimenews. 57

Invisible Black Victims versus VisibleBlack Suspects

While many crime stories do not identifyrace, there is some evidence thatnewspapers are more likely to identify racein a crime story when an African Americanis the suspect.58,59 In nine of 12 (75%)studies, minorities were overrepresentedas perpetrators of crime.60 Six out of seven(86%) studies that clearly identify the raceof victims found more attention was paidto White victims than to Black victims.61

(See Table 1).

Victims. Several studies found that Blackvictims are less likely to be covered innewspapers than are White victims62, andone found that newsworthiness increaseswhen the victim is White.63 Homicides ofWhite victims resulted in more and longerarticles than homicides of Black victims.64

The news media’s preference for stories ofWhite homicide victims over Black victimsis part of what motivated Sorenson et al.(1998) to coin the term “worthy victim” todescribe who gets attention in newspaperstories about homicide. They found thatmurders of Blacks and Latinos weresubstantially underreported in the LosAngeles Times in a special seven-partseries that reported five years of homicides

Table 1: Nineteen* studies mention therace of victims and perpetrators

Six out of seven (86%) studies that clearly identify the race of victims find an underreporting of minority victims

Studies finding the Studies finding no underrepresentation underrepresentation of minority victims: of minority victims:Hawkins et al 1995 Fedler & Jordan 1996Johnstone et al 1994Pritchard & Hughes 1997Romer et al. 1998Sorenson et al. 1998Weiss & Chermak 1998

Among studies that document the race of perpetrators, nine out of 12 (75%) find minorities overrepresented

Studies finding minority 3 studies document no overrepresentation overrepresentation as as perpetrators: perpetrators:Barlow 1995 Fedler & Jordan 1996Barlow 1998 Rodgers et al. 2000Dulaney 1969 Sorenson et al. 1998Gilliam & Iyengar 2000Gilliam et al. 1996Entman 1990Grabe 1999Romer et al. 1998Weiss & Chermak 1998

*24 studies mention the race of victims and/or suspects but not all present the data clearly differentiated.

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in the county (1990-1994). For example,they found that 80% of homicide victimsin Los Angeles were Black or Hispanic. YetBlacks were half as likely to be depicted ashomicide victims as Whites in the LosAngeles Times, and Hispanics were two-thirds as likely to be depicted as homicidevictims as Whites. Put another way, whena White person is murdered in LosAngeles, it is three times as likely thatthere will be a story about it in the LosAngeles Times than if the victim is Black.Asians and Whites, conversely, make up3.8% and 12.9% of victims in Los Angeles.Nearly 9% of homicide victims depicted inthe Los Angeles Times in Los Angeles wereAsian, and fully 20.9% of homicide victimsdepicted in the Los Angeles Times wereWhite. They concluded that the paper’shomicide coverage “focused on the ‘worthyvictim’ — the White, youngest and oldest,women, high socioeconomic status, whowere killed by strangers.”65 ResearcherMike Males found that the only schoolshootings not prominently covered duringthe 1997-99 school years were thoseinvolving minority victims (see sidebar).

Perpetrators. The coverage of perpetratorsof color is less out of balance than thecoverage of victims. Some studies founddistinct disparities, while others foundperpetrators of color represented innumbers that matched their local arrestrates, but found Whites underrepresented.For example, a study of murder coveragein Indianapolis newspapers found that thepercentage of articles about Blacksuspects reflected the percentage ofBlacks arrested for murder (60% and 61%,respectively), but if the suspect was Black,the average article length was longer thanfor a White suspect.66

There are more crimes committed each year than the newsmedia have space to cover. As in all other fields, the mediamust make choices. The following summary digested fromKids and Guns: How Politicians, Experts, and the MediaFabricate Fear of Youth (Common Courage Press 2000) byMike Males, Ph.D., discusses which homicides were andweren’t chosen for national coverage.

From May 1997 to November 1999, in Ventura, California,three affluent suburban adults in their 40’s killed 10 people inmultiple-victim shootings — six children and four adults. That’smore than the combined toll of school shootings in Pearl,Mississippi; West Paducah, Kentucky; and Jonesboro,Arkansas — all in just one county. Yet none of the Venturagrownup shootings made national headlines. All the usual bigstory ingredients were there: well-off perpetrators killinginnocent children in communities where “murder just doesnot happen.” The only big-story ingredient missing: themurderers were not youths.

Consider the dozen mass shootings in the last half of 1999.All involved middle class adults. The toll was 90 casualties:59 dead (including 21 minors) and 31 wounded. Thus, just25 weeks of middle-aged mass shootings killed and injuredfar more people than three years of highly publicized schoolshootings (Columbine 16; Jonesboro 4; West Paducah 3;Springfield 2; Pearl 2; Mt Morris Township 1). All occurredwhere “such things are not supposed to happen”: professionaloffices, churches, community centers, upscale hotels, orsuburban homes. A few received press attention (e.g. theAtlanta office mass-murder) but the media quickly wearied ofthe sheer number of middle-aged killings.

Likewise, the news media made choices about coverageeven within the category of school shootings. According tothe National School Safety Center, from 1997 - 1999, therewere 30 school killings that received practically no publicity.

The deaths fell into two categories. Twenty-two involvedminority student victims or students of unknown racesattending mostly-minority schools. Eight involved white victims— of those, seven involved adult perpetrators, and one studentdied from an aneurysm after a fist fight with another student.

In the super-charged 1999 school year when the mediafeverishly awaited any new school shooting, three were virtuallyignored. A 14-year-old Elgin, Illinois, teen was shot to deathin his classroom in February. Not news: he was Latino and inSpecial Ed. On June 8, two girls were gunned down in frontof their high school in Lynwood, California. Not news (even inthe Los Angeles Times which ran a modest story on an insidepage): they were Latinas. On November 19, a 13-year-oldboy shot a 13-year-old girl in a Deming, New Mexico, middleschool. Both were also Latinos.

Several of the unheralded school killings had death tollsequaling or exceeding nationally headlined killings. Why thendid the news media deem white-suburban-student killings anapocalypse and white adult, minority student and inner-citykillings of no import? To ask the question is to answer it: inthe crass logic of the newsroom things like that are “supposedto happen” to darker-skinned youth.


RMMW’s study of local TV news across thecountry in 1995 found that 37% ofperpetrators on local TV news were Black,32% were Latino, 27% were White, and 4%were Asian. Whites dominated most otherroles on local TV news in the nation thatday, comprising 89% of the anchors, 78%of the reporters, 87% of the officialsources, and 80% of the victims.67 Ninemonths later the numbers were nearlyidentical.68

Close looks at local TV news in a majormedia market and large urban centerfound disparities as well. Blacks were 22%more likely to be shown on local TV newsin Los Angeles committing violent crimethan nonviolent crime, while according topolice statistics, Blacks were equally likelyto be arrested for violent crime andnonviolent crime. Likewise, Hispanics were14% more likely to be depicted ascommitting violent crime than anonviolent crime, whereas Hispanics were7% more likely to be arrested for a violentcrime than a nonviolent crime.69 Somemight argue that this is simply becauseviolent crime is more newsworthy thannon-violent crime. But Whites were 31%more likely to be depicted committing anonviolent crime than a violent crime,whereas Whites were in fact only 7% morelikely to be arrested for a nonviolent crimethan a violent crime. Thus, while Blacksand Hispanics were overrepresented asviolent offenders, Whites wereunderrepresented as violent offenders onthe evening news. In addition, researchersfound that when stories featured a Blackperpetrator, reporters included sourceshostile to the perpetrator half the time,whereas with White perpetrators,reporters included hostile sources only25% of the time.70

How are African Americans depicted incrime stories? In his extensive work onportrayals of African Americans on localtelevision news71, Professor RobertEntman documents that Blacks are mostlikely to be seen in television news storiesin the role of criminal, victim, ordemanding politician. Black suspects wereless likely to be identified by name as wereWhite suspects; were not as well dressedas White suspects on the news; and weremore likely to be shown physicallyrestrained than Whites. In sum, Blacksuspects were routinely depicted as beingpoor, dangerous, and indistinct from othernon-criminal Blacks. He also found thatBlacks are more frequently reported inconnection with violence, and that Blacksuspects and their defenders weresubstantially less likely to speak in thestories than were their Whitecounterparts, reinforcing their absence ofindividuation.72

Are Blacks blamed for crime? Romer etal. (1998) wanted to find out whether theoverrepresentation of people of color,especially African Americans, in storiesabout crime and other problems wassimply an accurate reflection of the crimethat Blacks committed or the consequenceof journalists’ interpreting Black crime asintergroup conflict. They posited that ifBlacks are shown accused of crimes, butnot affected by crime or active inprevention efforts, the blameinterpretation would persist in viewers.The authors examined more than 3,000stories from 14 weeks of local TV news inPhiladelphia. They found Blacksoverrepresented in crime stories and morelikely to be shown as perpetrators inviolent and nonviolent crime (though onestation had a more balanced portrayal,

Off Balance16

with higher rates of Blacks in nonviolentroles). They found Whites represented asvictims at a greater rate than asperpetrators, ranging from 30-70%73, all ofwhich were greater than Whites’ rate ofvictimization according to police statisticsin Philadelphia. Despite much higher ratesof Black victimization according to theFBI, White victims are shown at a muchhigher rate on the news. They found that“persons of color are represented in thecrime category primarily for theircontribution to crime,” whereas Whites“are shown primarily for their reaction toand suffering from crime.”74 Romer et al.conclude that these depictionsoveremphasize the harm people of colorinflict on White victims, perpetuatetension between groups, and inhibitcooperation.

Interracial Crime. Our nation has anugly history of treatment of interracialcrime, dating from slavery through the“Jim Crow” era to the well-documentedfact that today Blacks have a higher riskof receiving the death penalty for killingWhites than any other victim-offenderracial mix.75 That history is reflected inpublic opinion polling on race and crimethat shows that Whites overestimate theirlikelihood of being victimized by minoritiesby three to one.76 The research weexamined found that depictions ofinterracial crime were emphasized. Onlocal TV news in Philadelphia, four in tenstories about non-White perpetratorsdepicted a White person as a crime victim,whereas only one in ten homicides with aminority perpetrator actually involved aWhite victim.77 Likewise, interethnichomicides were 25% more likely to bereported in the Los Angeles Times thantheir actual occurrence in Los Angeles in

1990-1994.78 On local television news inChicago, 76% of Chicago news aboutBlacks was crime or politics, with storiesabout Black victimizations of Whites beingespecially prominent.79 These findings aredisturbing since people of any racial groupare far more likely to be killed by someoneof the same race.

Contradictory Evidence. The evidence ofdistorted news portrayals of race andcrime is strong, but there are someexceptions. A content analysis of the St.Louis Post-Dispatch did not find AfricanAmerican portrayals limited to stereotypedroles of perpetrator or entertainer.80 Theauthors suggest that this may be theresult of a heightened awareness by thenewspaper staff to combat suchstereotypes. Another study found thathomicides allegedly committed by Blacksor Hispanics tended to be covered lessextensively than homicides allegedlycommitted by Whites.81 Another found nosignificant difference in the depictions ofAfrican Americans and Whites in the[Orlando] Sentinal Star in news coverageduring 1980, though crimes considerednewsworthy most often involved AfricanAmericans, and so it was those crimesthat were more likely to appear in thepaper.82 A reporter told those researchersthat racial identification in a crime story"was something I was told to leave out".83

Finally, researchers conducted a"baseline" content analysis of 1980newspapers to determine the prominenceof coverage of Mexican Americans, theirrepresentation, characterization, andwhether there is any variability in thosedepictions.84 Though Mexican Americansare generally underrepresented inAmerican newspapers, the researchers didnot find an overemphasis on crime

Despite much higher rates of Black victimization according to the FBI, White victims are shown at a muchhigher rate on the news.


reporting.85 However, more recent researchindicates that Latinos rarely appear in thenews, and when they do it is likely to be instories about crime or immigration.86

Summary and Implications. Despitesome evidence to the contrary, 75% ofstudies that investigated the race ofperpetrators conclude that people of colorare disproportionately associated withviolent crime as suspects in news stories.Six out of seven studies that examined therace of victims found a consistent under-reporting of people of color as victims ofcrime. In news coverage, Blacks are mostoften the perpetrators of violence againstWhites and other Blacks, whereas inreality Whites are six times as likely to behomicide victims at the hands of otherWhites.87 Other summaries of contentanalyses have found that AfricanAmericans and Latinos are more oftenportrayed as criminals and less frequentlyshown as victims.88 Consequently, itappears that most Americans are given anerroneous picture of racial violence andwho suffers most often from crime, asattested to by public opinion surveys. Inparticular, the absence of Black victims,coupled with the repeated presence ofBlack suspects across different sources ofnews, reinforces stereotypes about AfricanAmericans as a group audiences shouldfear.

Finding #4: Few studies examineportrayals of youth on the news.Those that do find that youth rarelyappear in the news, and when theydo, it is connected to violence.

There is substantially less research thatfocuses on portrayals of youth in thenews.89 Though the findings are

consistent, there are fewer of them. Of the146 articles we originally identified, only16 examined whether and how youth wereportrayed on television news ornewspapers.90 Despite the small number ofstudies, the findings are consistent withthe emphasis on violent crime in newscoverage generally. Thus, when youthappear in the news, it is often connectedto violence. There is also evidence thatyouth appear in violent contexts, as wemight expect since most crime news isviolence-related. A few of the studies alsoparallel the general findings on race andthe news. Young people of color seem tofare as poorly as adults on the news —perhaps worse. Finally, some studies findthat violence perpetrated by adults uponyouth is underreported.

News Involving Youth is Violent. Storiesabout youth in newspapers and ontelevision news are scarce. When they doappear in the news, youth usually are instories about education or violence.91

Relatively few youth are arrested each yearfor violent crimes, yet the message fromthe news is that this is a commonoccurrence. The earliest study we found tofocus on youth and crime in the news wasan examination of Minnesota newspaperspublished between July 1, 1975, and June30, 1976.92 Overall the study found thatimages of boys emphasized theft andviolence primarily because status offenseswere not included in coverage. By failingto report on status offenses, whichrepresent the more common problemsfacing a greater number of young people,the news picture of youth, like adults, isfocused on the more unusual yet far lessfrequent crimes. As with crime coveragegenerally, theft and violence committed byyouth are more serious than status

In particular, the absence of Black victims, coupled with the repeated presence of Black suspects acrossdifferent sources of news, reinforces stereotypes about African Americans as a group audiences should fear.

Off Balance18

offenses. Still, the authors were concernedthat the absence of the lesser offenses inthe picture means that delinquents “arepresented as inevitably bad, and, if leftuntreated, they will inevitably go wrong.”93

Studies of how juvenile crime was coveredover 10 years in Hawaii’s major dailies,The Honolulu Star Bulletin and TheHonolulu Advertiser, showed extremedistortions of juvenile crime.94 From 1987to 1996, the newspapers’ coverage ofjuvenile delinquency increased 30-fold.The newspapers’ coverage of gangsincreased 40-fold; the most frequent typeof juvenile crime story reported by thenewspapers was “gang activity.” Thisexploding coverage did not simply reflecthigher rates of crime and violence amongHawaii’s youth. On the contrary, unlike

the rest of the country, Hawaii saw itsjuvenile crime rates decline or remainstable during the same period. Theauthors conclude that since most Hawaiiresidents “believe the media do a fairlygood job reporting crime news” and newsmedia are the primary source for thatnews, it appears that many peopleperceive the nature of juvenile crime inHawaii to be typified by violent and/organg-related offenses.95 In fact, in Hawaiimost youth are arrested for less seriousoffenses such as vandalism, running awayfrom home, drug possession and fighting.96

An analysis examining 840 newspaperstories and 109 network news segments in1993 showed that 40% of all newspaperstories on children were about violence, aswere 48% of network television news

Graph 3: One out of every two (53%) local TV news stories concerning children or youth involved violence, while Californiacrime data show that one out of every 50 (2%) young people in

California were either victims or perpetrators of violence in 1993

* Dorfman et al 1997. In this study youth included people through age 24.** Youth arrest data come from the California Department of Criminal Justice's California Criminal JusticeProfile 1995. Population data come from the California Department of Finance, Race/Ethnic Population with Age and Sex Detail, 1970 - 2040, 1998. Youth in these data were defined as up to age 18.

53%One out of every two

stories about youth

involved violence*

1 out of every 50 (2%) of youth in California were victims

or perpetrators of violence**


stories.97 Nominal attention was given totopics of family, health, or economicconcerns. There was more overall coverageof crime and violence than of all otherpolicy issues combined. In a later studythat examined 3,172 randomly selectedstories on youth in one year of the LosAngeles Times, Sacramento Bee, and SanFrancisco Chronicle, researchers foundthat the newspapers focused largely ontwo topics: education and violence. Noother topic rated even a third as muchattention. Education stories comprised26% of all stories involving youth. Theauthors maintain that this is appropriatesince the vast majority of youth betweenthe ages of 5 and 17 attend school andabout half continue after high school. Butviolence stories made up 25% of all youthcoverage, when only three young people in100 perpetrate or become victims ofviolence.98

The circumstances in which youth areseen on television news are similar. Astudy of youth on local television news in1993 examined 214 hours of localtelevision news broadcast over 11 days on26 stations throughout California.99 Morethan two-thirds of violence stories involvedyouth while more than half of all storiesthat included youth involved violence.100

One out of every two (53%) TV newsstories concerning children or youthinvolved violence, while California crimedata show that one out of every 50 (2%)young people in California were eithervictims or perpetrators of violence in 1993.(See Graph 3.) Nearly seven in 10 newsstories (68%) on violence in Californiainvolved youth, whereas youth made up14.1% of violence arrests in California thatyear.101 (See Graph 4).

Young people had to performextraordinary feats to appear on localtelevision news in non-violence-relatedcircumstances. For example, in the fall of1993, a story ran on local stations acrossthe state on the youngest person to flysolo across the country. Stories aboutyouth accomplishments accounted for1.2% of the total news time in the study,and these stories rarely featured localyoung people — most were storiesprovided to local stations intact via theirsatellite feed services.

In a more recent study of youth depictionson network and local TV news,researchers found a similar paucity ofstories on youth active in community lifeor achieving success. On local TV news,the top two leading subjects involvedyouth and violence and the third mostfrequent topic was accidents, often carcrashes.102 Overall, the researchers found“twice as many discussions of crime andviolence as there were of educationalissues and student achievement.”103

Among the 9,678 network and local TVstories the researchers analyzed, theyfound only nine “instances of teenspraised for their involvement incommunity service or humanitarian work,and just six students who were singled outfor their exceptional educationalachievements.”104

Once again, it is important to note thatsome crimes are worse than others.Homicide logically deserves more attentionthan delinquency or theft. But it is alsoimportant to consider the backdropbehind the homicide stories. When itcomes to stories about youth, there is littleelse of consequence in the news. Whennews coverage about productive,

Off Balance20

nonviolent youth are the exception, notthe rule, violence fills the void. Audienceswithout other contact with young peopleare particularly vulnerable to theperception that youth are violent and outof control. Crime and violence coveragemay displace other types of coverage aboutchildren and youth, or diminish theimportance the public places on children’sissues.105 The bias toward theft andviolence may be influencing legislators toenact inappropriate policy as aconsequence of believing the underlyingmessages in the news coverage.106 Further,when youth crime receives a far largershare of all crime coverage than youthsactually commit, and when youth crimecoverage dramatically increases whileactual youth crime is decreasing, the

public that relies on media coverage as itsprimary source of information about youthcrime is misinformed.

Youth of Color Fare Worse than theirWhite Counterparts. The one study thatexamined youth portrayals in magazineshad the most to say about race.107 Aqualitative analysis of all cover stories inTime and Newsweek between 1946-1995determined that the term “young Blackmales” became synonymous with the word“criminal” during the late 1960’s whenBlacks were struggling for equality. AMarch 1965 Newsweek article was thefirst to connect crime with Black crime.The first use of “young Black male” in aTime or Newsweek cover story was in1970 when Time reported that “though

Graph 4: Seven out of 10 local TV news stories on violence in California involved youth, but young people only made up

14.1% of violent arrests

14.1%

68%

* Dorfman & Woodruff 1998. The study examined 214 hours of local TV newsduring October-November 1993.** Youth arrest data come from the California Department of Criminal Justice'sCalifornia Criminal Justice Profile, 1995. Population data come from the CaliforniaDepartment of Finance, Race/Ethnic Population with Age and Sex Detail, 1970-2040, December 1998.

In 1993, seven out of 10(68%) of local TV newsstories on violence in

California involved youth. *

Young people made up14.1% of violence arrests in

California in 1993. **


victims of Black crime are overwhelminglyBlack, it is chiefly young Black males whocommit the most common interracialcrime: armed robbery.”108 The authorargues that the story cemented theconnection by focussing on Washington,DC, which had the highest proportion ofBlacks in US cities and high rates ofcrime. Two years later Newsweek madethe same connection. In later stories in the1970’s, both Time and Newsweekportrayed crime as “largely perpetrated by‘young Black males’”.109 Later, Hispanicmales were added to the picture. Theauthor suggests that a combination ofmodern racism110, media framing, andpublic discourse of crime as a problem ofthe Black urban poor has led to theracialization of crime, concluding that, asa consequence of news coverage, anydiscussion of crime today is essentially adiscussion about race.

One study examined the speakers andspeaking roles in local TV news storiesabout youth and violence.111 The premisewas that young people speaking on thenews are the images in the stories likely toleave the most lasting impression amongaudiences.112 The study found that youthseldom speak for themselves in any story.Although most stories about violenceinvolve youth, the predominant speakersin stories were adults, usually men.However, with every violence-related rolein which youth spoke – whether victim orwitness of violence, victim or witness ofthreat, or criminal or suspect – youth ofcolor were represented more often. Bycontrast, a higher percentage of Whiteyouths who spoke were in the role ofvictims of unintentional injury, a morelimited and sympathetic role.

A study of youth crime portrayals in theNew York Times revealed a similarimbalance. In that study, researchersfound Black or Latino youth were neverquoted directly while White youth werequoted in all five stories in which theyappeared. Furthermore, defense attorneysfor White youth were quoted 13 times butonly twice for youth of color.113

Crime news is where all youth are mostlikely to be seen on TV news, but youth ofcolor appear in crime news far more oftenthan White youth — 52% and 35%,respectively. White youth were presentmore often in health or education stories(13%) than were youth of color (2%).114

In some cases, reporters may revert tostereotypes when they face languagebarriers or rely too heavily on one source.For example, in a qualitative analysis of44 newspaper articles and 18 TV newsbroadcasts of a hostage-taking incident ina “Good Guys” electronics store,researchers found an emphasis on Asiangangs. The researchers discovered,however, that the young people were notgang members.115 For most of the newsstories, reporters relied heavily oninformation from law enforcement officerswho speculated inaccurately on theyouths’ gang memberships and the spreadof Asian gang activity in othercommunities.116

Youth Victims & Perpetrators. Only afew studies distinguished between youthvictims and perpetrators. One found thathomicide victims under age 15 receivedmore coverage in the Los Angeles Timesthan would be expected based on thefrequency of homicides in that group.117

Researchers examining the San Francisco

Off Balance22

Chronicle found more depictions of youthperpetrators than youth victims118; thisfinding concerned the researchers sinceyouth are victims of crime at much higherlevels than they are perpetrators of crime.Adults commit 1.5 times more violentcrimes against juveniles than juvenilescommit against each other; three timesmore children and youth are murdered byadults than by other juveniles.119

There was other evidence that youthperpetrators get more news attention thanyouth victims. In another examination ofthe Los Angeles Times researchers foundthat nearly one in four murder suspects(23.9%) whose ages were identified in theLos Angeles Times in 1997 were youth,while only one in six homicide arrestees(15.8%) in Los Angeles actually were youththat year.120 The overrepresentation ofyouth in homicide reporting occurreddespite the fact the adult homicidearrestees killed more victims than theirjuvenile counterparts.

Violence Against Youth is Under-reported. Two studies assessed whethercrimes against young people were beingcovered; both studies found that crimesperpetrated by adults against youth areunder-reported.121 Several other studiesthat examined depictions of youth in thenews generally did not detect substantialcoverage on youth as victims of violence.122

The relative lack of reporting on violenceagainst youth can be juxtaposed with theover-reporting of homicide by youth ascompared to adults. In a comparison ofyouth portrayals in 327 stories from the1997 Los Angeles Times (Orange Countyedition) to crime reports from the LosAngeles Police Department, researchers

found youth homicides were nearly threetimes more likely to be reported in the LosAngeles Times, despite the fact that adultscommit and are victims of far moremurders. The authors conclude that theTimes’ misplaced focus scapegoats youth,since they commit far fewer crimes thanadults.123

Effects on Public Perceptions

A detailed study of the coverage ofDenver’s “Summer of Violence,” providesan opportunity to explore the influence thenews media has on the public’s perceptionof youth violence.124 The study comparedcoverage of youth homicides in the DenverPost during the summer of 1993 tocoverage in the summers of 1992 and1994. The study also provides interviewswith journalists, as well as elected officialsand criminal justice personnel, toascertain journalists’ motivations andimpact on policy making during thatwatershed period for juvenile justicelegislation in Colorado.

The study found that, while youth violencewas a growing problem for many years inDenver, the news media shaped andhighlighted the problem of youth violenceduring the “Summer of Violence” by givinghigh visibility coverage to several youthkillings. This brought youth violence to thepublic’s attention, even though homicidesby youth in Denver were slightly higher in1991, 1992, and 1994 than in 1993.125 TheGovernor called a special session of thelegislature that year and the legislaturepassed several punitive pieces of juvenilejustice legislation, many of which hadpreviously been considered and rejected.After the “Summer of Violence” the newsmedia moved on to other issues, and


coverage of juvenile crime subsideddramatically, even though juvenilehomicides increased the next year, andover the next summer. There was a168.5% increase in the number of articlesabout youth crime between the summersof 1992 and 1993, and then a 220%decline in articles about youth crime inthe summer of 1994, despite a 17%increase in the youth homicide rate in thesummer of 1994 versus the previoussummer. Similarly, there were 14 times asmany “A” section articles in the summer of1993 than in the summer of 1992 andfour times as many in 1993 as in 1994.More than three times as many columninches were devoted to youth crime in thesummer of 1993 as in either 1992 or1994. Ultimately, the study concludes thatit is not data, but news coverage, thatgalvanizes policy action about youthviolence.

The Denver study shows us thatheightened news coverage can focusattention and catapult policy action, atypical agenda-setting effect of the news. Asecond media effect, framing, can alsohave a profound impact on how newsstories are interpreted by the public.Relevant here are experiments researchershave conducted to examine whethertelevision news audiences responddifferently to stories that include “mugshots” of alleged youth perpetrators ofdifferent races: Anglo, Asian, AfricanAmerican or Hispanic.126

In the experiments, audiences werechosen at random in a Los Angelesshopping mall to watch a news broadcastthat contained a story with a close-upphoto of an alleged murderer who waseither a) African American or Hispanic; b)

White or Asian; or c) no racial identity. Afourth control group saw a broadcastwithout a crime story. Researchers foundthat “a mere five-second exposure to amug shot of African American andHispanic youth offenders (in a 15-minutenewscast) raises levels of fear amongviewers, increases support for ‘get tough’crime policies, and promotes racialstereotyping.”127 While the stories withperpetrators of color increase fear amongall viewers, White and Asian viewers havean increased desire for harsher punitivepolicies than African American or Hispanicaudiences, who, the authors suggest, arereminded of injustice and prejudice by thecrime stories. Thus, the authors argue,when mug shots of African Americans andLatinos are shown, local TV news crimestories expand the divide between racialgroups. In a similar experiment,researchers found that students ratedBlack suspects as more guilty, deservingof punishment, more likely to commitfuture violence, and less likable than theWhite suspects, about whom they weregiven precisely the same information.128

Survey research on racial stereotyping andcrime helps explain the experimentalfindings. Researchers have found thatwhen Blacks are placed in a violentcontext, Whites who hold stereotypicalattitudes that consider African Americansgenerally violent (and lazy) were far morelikely to believe that the Blacks were guiltyand prone to violence. But the samepeople did not have the same reaction ifWhites were the ones placed in the violentcontext.129

Thus several researchers conclude that adiscussion about crime in America isessentially a discussion about race.130

Off Balance24

Evidence from a later study stronglysupports that conclusion, as 60% of thepeople watching a news story without animage of a perpetrator falsely rememberedseeing one, and in 70% of these cases they“remembered” the perpetrator as AfricanAmerican, even though they never sawhim.131

The findings about race and crimecatalogued in this report are eerily similarto research on news depictions of poverty.Martin Gilens compared network televisionand news magazine portrayals of povertyto who is poor in America, what Americansbelieve about the poor, and what thoseediting news photographs believe aboutthe poor. He found that pictures in thenews about poor people in Americadisproportionately feature AfricanAmericans, especially when depicting “lesssympathetic” poor adults, as opposed tothe working poor or the elderly.132 Gilensconcludes that the disproportionatenumber of Black faces in news imagesabout poverty may exist because networkbureau and news magazine photographerslargely operate in urban centers, wherepoor African Americans are moregeographically concentrated than poorWhites. When the story assignmentcomes, photographers go where it will beeasiest to take pictures of poor people —inner city African Americanneighborhoods.133 “Because poor Blacksare disproportionately available to newsphotographers,” Gilens suggests, “theymay be disproportionately represented inthe resulting news product.”134

However, Gilens notes that geographicconcentration of African Americans in theinner city and photo editors’ ownmisperceptions of the overall distribution

of race and poverty do not explaincompletely why there is such apreponderance of Blacks in news photosabout poverty. Gilens maintains that somecombination of photo editors’ ownconscious or unconscious stereotypes, ortheir conscious or unconscious“indulgence of what they perceive to be thepublic’s stereotypes” explains the rest.135

In other words, photo editors choosephotos with Black poor people in thembecause they think their viewers orreaders will more easily interpret thephotograph as being about poverty.Readers will recognize the familiar image,what they “know” to be true.

Crime news may suffer from similarfactors of urban geographic concentrationand stereotyping by news editors andreporters. Most youth violence in whichyouth are the perpetrators occurs inurban centers. In fact, in 1994, 30% of thehomicides committed by youth occurred injust four cities — Chicago, Detroit, LosAngeles, and New York — cities whichcontained only 5% of America’s youthpopulation.136 In 1997, 94% of counties inAmerica had either one or no juvenilehomicides, most of those being rural orsuburban counties. Editors and producersmay be making choices about whichcrimes to include that reflect their owninternalized understanding of what crimeconsists of and what their audience caresabout: violent Black perpetrators andWhite victims — the image that is beingreinforced by selection choices. In mostparts of the country, the primary newsaudience is White137, a group that isstatistically very unlikely to form theiropinions about minority youth crime frompersonal experience. Those making newsselections might assume that viewers and

Several researchers conclude that a discussion about crime in America is essentially a discussion about race


readers want to hear stories about peoplelike themselves. If the news outlet’saudience, or target demographic, isprimarily White, then editors and pro-ducers may “naturally” (that is, withoutcritical examination) choose stories thatfeature Whites in sympathetic roles.

Journalists ponder why. There arereasons the coverage looks as it does. Oneis that crime news is easy — everyoneknows what it looks like, how to gather it,and how to report it. Some journalistsargue that audiences want news aboutviolence, though most polls dispute thatargument. Another reason is that news isa business, and reporters, producers, andeditors have learned to choose the newsthey believe will draw the most attractiveaudience for advertisers.

The study of Denver’s “Summer ofViolence” offers some insight intonewsroom decision-making about whichhomicides warrant coverage.138 Afterinterviewing editors, producers, andreporters, the researcher concludes that,in covering Denver’s “Summer of Violence”in 1993, journalists viewed these mostlyWhite, middle class victims killed byminority youth through a predominantlyWhite middle class lens. Denver Postreporter Steven Lipscher said, for example:

Take a look at our editors over there.Take a look at the news editors at theTV stations. Most of them are Whitemiddle class. Most of them are menbut that doesn’t make a whole lot ofdifference here. They live in these nicemiddle class neighborhoods and whenthose neighborhoods start havingrandom crime…and it gets close to thesuburbs or even in the suburbs where

these news editors live, you know thatdeeply troubles them. When the crimewas centered solely on the inner cityif we had minority editors, people wholived in the inner city, we might havecovered it. But we didn’t and we stilldon’t. Inner city crime is not nearlyas shocking as suburban crime andthe only reason why is look at who iswriting the stories and look at who isassigning the stories.

The White, middle class lens means thatsome murders are more important thanothers, as explained by this RockyMountain News reporter:

There are homicides and then thereare homicides on the police beat. Thereare homicides I can work hard on andonly get this much into the paper. Andthen there are the kind that all youhave to do is mention to the editor,“Gotta former district attorney whojust killed his wife,” and we’re all overit…And as a colleague of mine oncesaid, he had this theory that therewere misdemeanor murders. That’snot a theory I subscribe to, but he hada point. Obviously, there are somemurders that don’t count as much asothers. A misdemeanor homicideaccording to Tony was typically a drugdealer [who] wipes out another drugdealer in an alley somewhere over abusiness deal gone bad. That isconsidered a low interest homicide(Emphasis in original).

Ultimately, individual news workers makedecisions about what to include in thenews of the day based on whether theypersonally care about the story. Reporters,editors, and producers have finely honed,

Off Balance26

internalized mechanisms that aretriggered by their personal values andemotional responses, tempered by newsjudgement, experience, and expectationsof audience response.139 Standardselection criteria for news stories —controversy, conflict, novelty, proximity,significance, timeliness, visual appeal,practicality — are processed through thepersonal filters of journalists.140

DISCUSSION

There has been concern about the effect ofcrime reporting on public understandingsince long before television. The FBI crimeindex was created in the 1930’s in order tocontrol the public interpretation of crimestatistics via the FBI, specifically to avoid“the way the press seemed to manufacture‘crime waves.’”141 Noncontextual newsreports have also been long lamented.Thirty years ago, the Kerner Commissionnoted that “By failing to portray the Negroas a matter of routine and in the contextof the total society, the news media have,we believe, contributed to the Black-Whiteschism in this country.”142

This analysis tells us that these concernsare still warranted. The studies reviewedhere confirm that the news media’scumulative coverage of youth, race andcrime misrepresents crime, who suffersfrom crime, and the real level of involve-ment of young people in crime. With theconsistent underrepresentation of Whiteperpetrators and over-representation ofBlacks and Latinos in violent crimestories, local TV news in particularregularly reinforces the erroneous notionthat crime is rising, that it is primarilyviolent, that most criminals are nonwhite,and that most victims are White.

Non-representative portrayals of youth areespecially problematic. The fact thatviolence against children and youth is amuch larger problem than violencecommitted by youth143 has gone largelyunreported by the news media.

The public relies on news for itsknowledge of crime. We suggest that a“misinformation synergy” occurs in crimenews that profoundly misinforms thepublic. The synergy results from thesimultaneous and consistent presentationof three significant distortions in print andbroadcast news. It is not just that AfricanAmericans are overrepresented ascriminals and underrepresented asvictims, or that young people areoverrepresented as criminals, or thatviolent crime itself is given unduecoverage. It is that all three occur together,combining forces to produce a terriblyunfair and inaccurate overall image ofcrime in America. Add to that a majority ofreaders and viewers who rarely have anypersonal experience with crime by Blackyouth, and a White adult population whomust rely on the media to tell them thatstory and we have the perfect recipe for amisinformed public and misguided powerstructure.

Each study’s findings, taken alone, maynot be cause for alarm. After all, crime is aserious problem that demands newsattention and political action.

But if news audiences are taking the crimecoverage at face value, they are acceptinga serious distortion. They are likely tobelieve that most crime is extremelyviolent and that perpetrators are Blackand victims White. If news audiences havelittle contact with young people, they are

The studies reviewed here confirm that the news media’s cumulative coverage of youth, race and crimemisrepresents crime, who suffers from crime, and the real level of involvement of young people in crime


likely to believe that youth are dangerousthreats, in part because there are so fewother representations of youth in the newsto the contrary.

As noted in the Introduction to this report,the public believes just that. Seventy-sixpercent of Americans say they get theiropinions about crime from the news.144 A1998 poll found that nearly two-thirds(62%) of the public believes that juvenilecrime is on the increase,145 even thoughthere has been a 56% decline in homicidesby youth between 1993 and 1998146 andthe National Crime Victimization Surveyreports youth crime at its lowest since thatsurvey began (1973). Rather thaninforming citizens about their world, thenews is reinforcing stereotypes that inhibitsociety’s ability to respond effectively tothe problem of crime, particularly juvenilecrime.

Journalists, too, are among the largestconsumers of news. If the picture isdistorted, it affects them as well.Reporters, editors, and producers makingselections about what to cover arecompletely saturated by the images intheir own storytelling. It appears that theyhave come to believe that the images theypresent on their pages and over the airreflect the world accurately.147

Since every news outlet can’t cover everycrime, the question then becomes, howshould reporters choose which crimes tocover? How can the overall picture bemade more accurate? How can print andbroadcast journalists make choices thatminimize the distortions documented byresearchers since 1910? How can theircumulative choices better reflect the crimeand violence they cover? And when they

make those choices, how can the mediaadd more context to crime coverage so asto improve the viewers’ understanding ofthe causes and solutions to violent crime?

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR THENEWS MEDIA

The overwhelming evidence is that in theaggregate, crime coverage is not reflectingan accurate picture of who the victims andperpetrators are. The most consistentfinding across media and across time isthe gross distortion of the types of crimereported in the news. Rather thaninforming citizens about their world, thenews is reinforcing stereotypes that inhibitsociety’s ability to respond to the problemof crime, including juvenile crime. This isan admittedly difficult problem to fix,given the many constraints of dailyjournalism. Nonetheless, it is way pasttime to try to create a more accurateoverall picture of crime, who suffers fromit, and what can be done to prevent it. Tobegin to address this dilemma, we suggestthat reporters, editors, and producersexpand their sources; provide context forcrime news; increase enterprise andinvestigative journalism; balance storiesabout crime and youth with stories aboutyouth generally; conduct and discusscontent audits of their own news; andexamine the story selection process,adjusting if necessary.

Expand Sources

Reporters depend primarily on lawenforcement or criminal justice sources forcrime news. Several studies document thedanger of limiting sources to criminaljustice and police departments. Numerousanalyses we examined show the

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misrepresentation that can occur whenpolice statistics are reportedunquestioned.148 Asian, Latino andHawaiian youth, these studies found, werecast in stereotypical roles that did notreflect the population of youth, andmisrepresented the level of gang activity.The lack of other non-violence-relatedportrayals of youth exacerbates thisproblem.

The dependence on traditional policesources hampers the full story on crime inat least two ways. First, the police benefitfrom some control over publicunderstanding of crime statistics.Depending on the temper of the times, ifthey can show an increase in crime, theyhave reason for higher budgets. If theyshow crimes being addressed, they canengender public support. When efforts aremade to count, the numbers go up, whichmay simply reflect unrecognized instancesfrom before or a redefinition of old crimepatterns to the new “countable” — andfundable — category.

This phenomenon was well-documentedby Fishman (1980), who tracked amanufactured “crime wave” against theelderly that was created in part becausethe main source for information was lawenforcement. After local police created atask force on crimes against the elderly,journalists tuned in, and weresubsequently primed for stories on crimeagainst the elderly. Fishman witnessed aprocess whereby news workers in a localtelevision newsroom “manufactured” acrime wave by continuing to report oncrimes against the elderly despite policestatistics that showed an overall decreasein those crimes compared to the previousyear. The close relationship between police

and reporters propelled crimes against theelderly to the top of the media agenda. Allof this means the journalists’ role aswatchdog over public institutions andtheir ability to check police activity againstother sources is important. They can onlydo that well if they have a good familiaritywith sources other than law enforcement.

Second, police look good when the focus ison violent crime because they have abetter record of solving homicide andsexual assault than they do with propertycrimes.149 For example, researchers founda 200% increase in crime preventionstories between 1980 and 1985 inLouisiana newspapers, mostly covering“Crime Stoppers” and “NeighborhoodWatch” programs.150 They note the mutualinterest police and reporters have inreporting like this. The police benefit frompublic acknowledgment of their work toprevent crime; reporters benefit bymaintaining good relationships throughsuch stories with police, whose access tocrime information they need if they are toreport breaking news.

A good example of journalists’ ability toexpand sources occurred in the coverageof the shootings at Columbine HighSchool. While official police reports wereincluded in the Columbine coverage, thenews media reached beyond lawenforcement for interpretation andexplanation.151 In the 12-month periodprior to the Columbine shooting, criminaljustice sources were quoted in 77% ofstories; in the Columbine coverage theywere sources in 45% of stories. In theColumbine coverage, the number ofsources per story increased as we heardmore from witnesses, independentexperts, issue advocates, politicians, and


youth themselves.152 The same questionsjournalists sought to answer afterColumbine — How could something likethis happen? What can we do to preventit? — Can also be asked of a wider rangeof sources when more common violencehappens locally.

Reporters should not cease using thepolice as sources for crime stories, butthat should not be the only place theylook. Some media researchers suggestedthat news organizations use interns toroutinely query other sources for news,just as they do now with “beat checks,”the calls made routinely to policestations.153 Law enforcement perspectiveslimit the questions a reporter mightpursue. Most crime beats are focused oncops and courts and the details of aspecific event. Reporters are focused onwhat happened, and whether theperpetrators have been apprehended.Community-based sources, public healthdepartments, and others have data andinformation that can balance a law-enforcement-only approach. For example,hospital admission data, though notalways available for a breaking story, canhelp reporters put crime and itsconsequences in perspective. Healthdepartments and coroner’s offices are goodsources of homicide data. Other socialagency employees and communityresidents can have information aboutneighborhood life pertinent to crimestories. Reporters need to cultivate thesesources the same way they cultivate thelocal beat cops.

Provide Context for Crime News inRegular Reporting

Robert Entman suggests that localtelevision attention to crime is a functionof news workers’ need to appeal to a wideaudience that crosses politicaljurisdictions. TV uses violent crime storiesto arouse emotions rather than presentinganalyses to help people deliberate localpolicy choices because emotional reactionsare the same across political boundaries,though policy may be different.154 Thusreporters are drawn to homicide becauseeveryone in their audience can appreciatethe drama. But interpreting violencenarrowly in terms of homicide, andinterpreting homicide in terms of personalaltercations or failure of restraint missesthe larger story of violence. For example,in a study provocatively titled, “Violence inAmerican cities: Young Black males is theanswer, but what was the question?,”racial differences for homicidesdisappeared when researchers controlledfor “marginal urban landscapes,” definedspecifically as proximity to LULU’s (LocallyUnwanted Land Uses, such as wasteincinerators, landfills, airports, refineries,etc.) and TOADS (Temporarily ObsoleteAbandoned Derelict Sites, such asdeserted factories, power plants, mines,vacant garbage-strewn lots, etc.).155 Localdisintegration is the key risk factor forviolent death, not age or race.156

Certainly excellent reporting on this issuehas been done157, but in general, thestudies here confirm that it is the dramaof single crimes that is regularly madevivid, not the links to larger social andphysical environments and precursors.

It is way past time to try to create a more accurate overall picture of crime, who suffers from it, and what canbe done to prevent it

Off Balance30

By context we do not mean the particulardetails of an individual crime (the “blood-soaked shirt” and the like). Instead we arereferring to the relationship of the singleincident to the larger social fabric, be thatneighborhood conditions, the risk factorsfor violence, or crime rates — all thethings that help explain the status ofcrime, race and youth. The challenge is toadd the social context to the storytellingand give audiences some guideposts forinterpreting the crime.

For example, no reporter would investigatea car crash scene, late at night, and notask whether the driver or passengers hadbeen drinking. It is an appropriatequestion because alcohol is a known riskfactor for vehicle crashes. But alcoholcontributes to homicide at almostprecisely the same rate it contributes tofatal car crashes — 32% and 33%respectively.158 If it make sense to ask thequestion, “Was alcohol involved?” At thescene of a crash, it makes sense to ask itat the scene of a crime. Questionsgenerated from the risk factor research onviolence can help crime beat reporters askbetter questions. Then they could linkspecific crimes to larger issues andprevention. For more than 15 years,epidemiologists have been identifyingviolence risk factors, including theavailability of firearms and alcohol, racialdiscrimination, unemployment, violence inthe media, lack of education, abuse as achild, witnessing violent acts in the homeor neighborhood, isolation of the nuclearfamily, and belief in male dominance overfemales.159

Another explanation print and broadcastjournalists could offer for the picture ofcrime reported here is that they focus on

the unusual — that the unusual is what,in fact, makes the crime storiesnewsworthy. While this might be true, itdoes not explain the absence of contextthat would help citizens understand howto interpret the rare event. In other areasof reporting, integrating context isexpected. In almost every area of anewspaper or broadcast — sports,business, politics, entertainment —general information is integrated with spotnews and events are made sense of foraudiences by placing them in a largercontext, if not in the same article, thenwith additional graphics or sidebars orstanding reports. With every other topic,newspapers are including information thatdepicts the status of issues, along with theunusual events.160 Stories on crime andyouth could be treated with equal depthand breadth.

There is some evidence that includingcontext as we’ve defined it here makes adifference to news consumers. In a 1993experiment, researchers found that whenaccidents were reported with moreattention to the “causal chain of events,described in the human context ofantecedents and aftermath, and weeklyaccounts of local accident statistics weregiven (including date, location andseverity),” then newspaper readers’ had abetter understanding overall of accidents’relationship to other community issues.161

An excellent example of providing contextoccurred with the Washington Post’scoverage of a 2000 shooting in Mt. MorrisTownship, Michigan, of a six-year-old girlby a six-year-old boy. To be sure, the Postcovered the tragedy, as did most papers,the day it occurred. But four weeks later,the Post ran an extensive, front page


article on the factors that contributed tothe boy’s involvement in the shooting,including the impoverished neighborhoodhe lived in, his ready access to guns, andthe neglect he received at the hands of hisdrug-involved caretakers — all factorswhich are highly associated withviolence.162 Other reports connected theconsequences of welfare reform to theincident, since the boy’s mother had beenforced back to work despite the lack ofadequate child care arrangements for herson.163

Providing context means that newsorganizations must reinvest in the practiceof journalism. Resources must beavailable so that journalists can do thework to understand the landscape ofviolence in the region they cover. Reportersneed time to cultivate relationships withkey sources, get to know neighborhoods,and do “gumshoe” journalism. It takesmuch more work, and time, on the part ofreporters to draw out the drama in thosestories and connect them meaningfully tothe larger context. News organizationsneed to support this time, which leads toour next recommendation.

Bolster Enterprise and IncreaseInvestigative Journalism

Reporting the unusual is of interest toreporters and the population at large. Buta news focus almost exclusively on theunusual has detrimental consequences.First, to the uninitiated news consumer,those unaware that reporters and editorsmake a series of choices about what goesinto the newspaper or TV broadcast, theregular diet of unusual over time seemsusual. If the only information peoplereceive about crime, violence, and youth is

from the news, it is not surprising thatthey would think the world is anincreasingly dangerous place, and thatAfrican Americans are more likely tovictimize Whites than are other Whites. Ifthe few studies of youth in the news arecorrect, the public learns that youngpeople are more violent than ever before,that most youth are violent, and thatpeople under age 18 commit almost asmuch violent crime as adults do. Yet noneof these conclusions is true.

Instead, reporters should be telling storiesabout typical events, and telling them withmore depth. Continuous coverage of rareevents, even with a disclaimer alertingnews consumers about the rarity, is notsufficient.

The remedy is enterprise journalism.Enterprise journalism means reportersdon’t work from news releases or policescanners, but get out from behind theirdesks, into the community, where avariety of sources and perspectives can bereported. Reporters can then do thedigging to find true exemplars of realtrends, rather than chasing the easy, butrare, high profile event.164 They can enlistorganizations such as the NationalInstitute for Computer-assisted Reportingwhich can help with collection andanalysis of trend data. Then they willknow what they are looking for, and beable to recognize a potentially newsworthyevent –– newsworthy because it is a goodexample of the real problems the regionfaces, not because it is rare. News pro-ducers hope their audiences will connectwith the human drama of the story, andthe human drama exists in the routineviolence as well as the unusual. It simplyrequires good reporting to uncover thatdrama.

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Investigative journalism — digging deeper,over longer periods of time — can helpuncover important stories and explain newtrends. It holds the potential to revealjuvenile crime stories that have gonecompletely unnoticed by the generalpublic. For example, in its award-winningseries on abuses at the state’s boot camps,the Baltimore Sun awoke state leaders andcitizens to abuses at the camps and laxafter care of delinquent youth uponrelease. The result — five top juvenilejustice officials lost their jobs, the bootcamps were permanently closed, and theDepartment of Juvenile Justice receivedits largest single-year budget increase inhistory.

Balance Stories about Crime and Youthwith Stories about Youth in General

News organizations must pull back theirlens to get a broader picture of what elseyoung people are doing. When it comes toyouth, violence is as prominent in thenews as education.165 Portraying the twosubjects nearly equally exaggerates therate of violence and gives short shrift toeducation, particularly since 52 millionyoung people go to school but only125,000 are arrested for violent crimeseach year. What issues affect them? Whatother newsworthy activities are theyengaged in? Without such coverage tobalance reporting on crime and violence,the public sees a narrow, inaccuratereflection of youth.

Journalists themselves are reaching thisconclusion. In an extensive article on howyouth are covered in newspapers, LosAngeles Times reporter David Shawdocumented similar critiques — and self-critiques — from journalists around the

country. Experts on children andjournalists themselves noted thatchildren’s issues are undercovered andaudiences underserved as a consequence.“Traditionally,” writes Shaw, “mostchildren have been in the news only whenthey’ve done something bad or whenothers have done bad things to them.Even though most kids don’t fit into eithercategory, this coverage can adversely —and unfairly — influence publicperceptions and public policies that affectchildren, especially teenagers.”166

To remedy this, some news organizationshave created special beats to coverchildren and youth. Organizations like theCasey Journalism Center for Children,Youth, and Families at the University ofMaryland provide training for reportersand editors on key issues. NewsLab, aproject affiliated with the Project forExcellence in Journalism, providessuggestions for reporters who want tobring more substance and betterstorytelling to local TV news. And, youngpeople themselves have made reasonablesuggestions that would result in morecomprehensive coverage. In SanFrancisco, the UNYTE Youth Team, aftercareful study of youth depictions in theSan Francisco Chronicle, suggested thatthe news media could balance crimecoverage of youth by:

1. presenting news reports about youthcrime in proportion to crime that youthcommit;

2. producing in-depth stories that connectthe conditions and underlying causesfor crime among youth;

3. hiring youth reporters for youth issuesand soliciting youth commentaries foreditorial pages;


4. linking the consequences of policydecisions to conditions and eventsinvolving youth (e.g., critically examinethe effectiveness of incarcerationpolicies);

5. reporting on the link between povertyand violence; and

6. involving young people in monitoringtheir coverage of youth.167

Heeding this advice may have the addedvalue of attracting younger audiences tothe news.

Conduct Internal Audits of the News

Print and broadcast journalists cancompare their outlet’s news reports toactual trends in the region they cover.What are the data on race, age, andgender in relation to violence? Based onthe news, would regular readers andviewers see an overall distorted picture ofcrime, race, and youth? News organiza-tions can and should examine and publishtheir own statistics on the race, age andgender of offenders and victims they re-port on and let readers and viewers knowhow that compares to other indi-catorsfrom criminal justice or public healthsources. Such analyses can foster pro-ductive newsroom discussion and spawnmechanisms for correcting the cumulativedistortion of story choices. Publishing theanalyses can also educate audiences to bebetter consumers of the news.

When a newspaper pays attention to howit portrays a group or an issue, and makesa concerted effort to change, it can end upwith a better news product. For example,the Los Angeles Times succeeded inexpanding the roles in which Latinosappeared in the paper after careful

content analysis and in-depth discussionin the newsroom.168 Using an innovativenewspaper content analysis, reporters andeditors were able to identify seriouslimitations in the way Latinos appeared inthe paper. The research helped reportersand editors understand the deficiencies oftheir own reporting, and the paper waswilling to hire a special group of reportersto focus on Latinos in Los Angeles. Theresults from the Times are promising.After months of work, Latinos now appearin the paper more frequently and in agreater diversity of roles, rather than beingconcentrated in low-income or criminaldepictions as they were previously.

Examine the Selection Process, andExercise Restraint When Necessary

Sometimes, the news media should notcover certain stories, or not cover themprominently, because they inflame but donot inform. Of course, news outlets cannotstop telling unusual stories, but they neednot tell every one, thereby overwhelmingreaders and viewers with a cumulativemisrepresentation, especially when itmeans there is not room for lesssensational but more important news.

Some news organizations have alreadybegun to apply criteria for story selection,like KVUE-TV in Austin, Texas, whichdoes not air crime stories unless they meetone of the following five criteria:

1. Does action need to be taken?2. Is there an immediate threat to safety?3. Is there a threat to children?4. Does the crime have significant

community impact?5. Does the story lend itself to a crime

prevention effort?

Off Balance34

KVUE-TV applied these criteria andremained the top-rated news program inits market. Following the shooting inSpringfield, Oregon, the Chicago Sun-Times editorialized that it would no longercover out-of-state shootings on its frontpage out of concern that the prevalence ofsuch shootings was being exaggerated andwould frighten children. The New YorkTimes’ coverage of the shooting in Mt.Morris Township, Michigan on March 1,2000, ran on page A14, given equivalentspace and prominence with a study onracial disparities in school suspensions.

Who Gets Attention in the Newsroom?

Is perceived victim “worthiness”169 theunspoken criteria for whether a murder isselected for the news? Reporters shouldask themselves: Who qualifies as a worthyvictim in my newsroom? Who doesn’t? Bymaking these criteria explicit and sharingdecisions with readers and viewers,reporters will give them some indication ofwhat they are choosing from, what thefield of possibilities is on a given day or ina given week.

If reporters limit themselves to reportingwhat just happened without consideringhow that crime fits into larger patterns,the news is doomed to be distorted. Thebest reporters can do in that situation issay, “This is unusual.” However, in theabsence of a picture of the usual, therepeated image of unusual crimes will fillthe void. One way out of this trap is to besure the newspaper, magazine, orbroadcast turns as much attention — orat least some — to the usual victims andperpetrators of crime. If, for example,domestic violence is a frequent type ofassault in the area the outlet covers, or if

child abuse is a frequent cause of deathfor young people, journalists should reporton that at least as frequently as othertypes of assaults or homicides.

The special case of race. In particular,reporters should ask themselves whetherthe race of the victim or suspectdetermines whether a story gets reported.One researcher noted that a Chicagonewspaper reporter told him that “hisnewspaper considered news of Negrocrime to be ‘cheap news’,” especially whenboth the victim and suspect were Black.170

In another study, four White reportersinterviewed believed race played no role instory selection, while the Black reporterwho was interviewed believed race did playa role.171 All the reporters interviewedequated race with location (inner cityversus suburbs).

Editors and producers may choose to givespace to certain crimes over othersbecause of who in their audience isaffected. Writing in Editor & Publisher,veteran journalist Nat Hentoff suggestedthat we don’t see much reporting ofvictims of color because “too manynewspapers treat such crimes as so‘routine’ as to be not worth the space toreport on them.”172 The research reviewedhere reveals a more complicated picture:It’s not just that victims of color are lessvisible, but also that suspects of color aremore vividly depicted.Race has powerful salience in news and isworth special attention in newsrooms.Discussion about crime and race amongjournalists has primarily been centeredaround whether or not racial identifiersare appropriate in stories describingsuspects.173 Recommendations haveincluded being sure the racial reference is

If reporters limit themselves to reporting what just happened without considering how that crime fits intolarger patterns, the news is doomed to be distorted


relevant, explaining that relevance,avoiding euphemistic adjectives (e.g.,“inner city”), using racial identifiers onlywhen they add value to the story, andbeing informed generally about people ofraces other than one’s own.174

There is some evidence that newsconsumers remember more about whatthey see than what they hear.175 Iyengar,for example, found that TV news viewerswere more likely to attribute responsibilityfor fixing problems to government andinstitutions after they watched TV newsstories that included contextualizinginformation, except when the storyfocused on an African American.176 In thatcase, viewers attributed responsibility forfixing the problem to the victim. Racetrumps everything else in news stories asviewers revert to demeaning andinaccurate stereotypes. Gilliam andIyengar refer to this as the “crime script”,the expected sequence of events fromwhich news consumers derive meaningand draw conclusions based on theirexperience with previous or similar events.When it comes to crime, they argue,television news has taught viewers thatthe pattern to expect is “crime is violent,and criminal behavior is associated withrace/ethnicity.”177

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR CHILDADVOCATES, YOUTH GROUPS ANDCIVIL RIGHTS ORGANIZATIONS

While most of this report and theserecommendations have focused on whatthe news media can and should do toimprove crime coverage, there is muchthat juvenile justice advocates can do tohelp generate a fairer depiction of youth

crime. Journalists make the ultimatedecisions about what stories will be toldand how the information will be conveyed.But journalists rely on their sources forinformation, verification, and explanation.If those with the most information aboutand access to young people refuse to talkwith journalists, the picture of youth onthe news will be incomplete. Werecommend that advocates buildrelationships with journalists, talk to themabout their coverage, and help them getthe information they need to do morecomplete stories, be it hard data or youngpeople to interview.

Work With Reporters To Give A MoreAccurate Picture

Because of the juvenile justice system’shistoric confidentiality protections, manychild advocates refuse to talk to reportersabout the context of individual cases. Thisplaces a serious and sometimesinsurmountable burden on reporters whenthey try to tell a more complete story. Itcan also result in monolithic depictions ofyoung people as criminals whosedelinquency is presented withoutimportant contributing antecedents.

Over the past decade, 43 states havediminished confidentiality protections, sothat the news media now haveunprecedented access to informationabout delinquency proceedings. Defenseattorneys and child advocates must learnnew ways to work with members of thenews media to allow a fuller story to betold about troubled young people, withoutabandoning confidentiality protections.Over the past year, conferences held bythe American Bar Association’s National

Off Balance36

Juvenile Defender Center and the NationalLegal Aid And Defender Association havesought creative ways to do just that. Otherresources are available for advocatesinterested in better understanding theconstraints of the news business andimproving their skills in communicatingwith reporters.178

Engage Reporters, Editors, andProducers In Dialogue About TheirCoverage

Child advocates, youth groups and civilrights groups need to begin to engagenews outlets as consumers to educate thenews media about their needs and tojointly seek solutions to the complexissues raised in this and other reportsabout coverage of youth crime. WeInterrupt This Message, an advocacygroup that conducted two of the studiesdiscussed in this report, took its findingson disproportionate youth crimeportrayals directly to the San FranciscoChronicle and the New York Times. In2000, Suffolk University’s law school helda forum which brought together reportersfrom the Boston Globe, the Boston Herald,and several electronic media with lawyersand community groups that work withyoung people for a productive exchange ofideas about coverage of youth crime. Inrecent years, civil rights groups like theNAACP and the National Council of LaRaza have highlighted the scarcity ofminority representation on networkprogramming. Although these effortsconcerned entertainment media, similarefforts to educate news media aboutdepictions of minority offenders andvictims may also be well received.

Make Data Available

Journalists need local data to makenational problems relevant for theiraudiences. Share information withjournalists so they can learn about localpatterns, incorporate that information intodaily stories, and give citizens theinformation they need to make betterdecisions about violence prevention policy.

Prepare Young People To Speak forThemselves, and Let Them Do So.

Youth are becoming involved in advocacyefforts about juvenile justice and violenceprevention from coast to coast. Give youngpeople the training and support they needto speak confidently about the work theyare doing to improve their communities forthemselves and others. Increasing thevisibility of young people in the news willhelp balance the current picture. Createsituations where young people caninteract with journalists so they can beginestablishing themselves as sources ontheir own.

Make Yourself Available to Reporters

Youth advocates and researchers cannothave an impact on the coverage of youthcrime if journalists don’t know they exist,if they cannot find spokespeople whenthey need them, or if advocates do notrespond to their requests for informationin a timely manner. Sometimes, this willbe difficult, because breaking storiesabout youth crime do not always arise atconvenient times. But advocates’availability as experts or alternative voicesprior to deadline can help shape coverageand put violence among youth into itsproper context.


CONCLUSION

If the public and policy makers haveinternalized a distorted picture of crime,race, and youth from the news, journalistsare likely to have done so as well. After all,journalists consume more news thananyone. A quick trip to any newsroommakes that instantly clear: Twenty-fourhours a day journalists are underpressure to be aware of current news oranything that might become news. Tomeet the pressure, news organizationsstay tuned in to each other, via the wireservices, radio, print, or TV, which isavailable in newsrooms overhead and inevery direction. News organizations watcheach other closely, and mimic each other’snews. Unfortunately, many of them arerepeating a terrible distortion. In whateverway they can, reporters have to breakthrough complacency and question theirown news and news gathering habits.When it comes to young people, race, andcrime, readers and viewers require a morecomplete accounting of what is happeningto whom. Without print and broadcastjournalists’ better efforts, the public willnever know enough about why violencehappens, what is happening to prevent it,and what, as a society, we should do next.

Off Balance38

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR PRINT & BROADCAST JOURNALISTS

1. Expand sources beyond police and courts.Health departments and coroner’s offices are good sources of homicide data. Hospital admissiondata, though not always available for a breaking story, can help reporters put crime and itsconsequences in perspective. Other social agency employees and community residents haveinformation about neighborhood life pertinent to crime stories. Reporters need to cultivate thesesources the same way they cultivate the local beat cops.

2. Provide context for crime in regular reporting.In almost every area of news — sports, business, politics, entertainment — general information isintegrated with spot reports and the news makes sense of events for audiences by placing them in alarger context, if not in the same article, then with additional graphics or sidebars or standingreports. Stories on crime and youth could be treated with equal depth and breadth.

3. Bolster enterprise and increase investigative journalism.This recommendation requires adequate investment in the practice of journalism. Reporters need thetime and resources to cultivate sources, investigate leads, and identify the connections betweenseemingly isolated events. They need support for understanding the patterns in a community so thatthey recognize when an event is important and interesting, not just interesting.

4. Balance stories about crime and youth with stories about youth in general.News organizations must pull back their lens to get a broader picture of what else young people aredoing. When it comes to youth, violence is as prominent in the news as education. This exaggeratesthe rate of violence, particularly since 52 million young people go to school but only 125,000 arearrested for violent crimes each year. What issues affect them? What other newsworthy activities arethey engaged in?

5. Conduct periodic audits of news content and share the results with readers and viewers.Newspapers and television newsrooms should periodically pause to examine their content. An auditwould look beyond the evening ratings and sales numbers to ask the question: If the onlyinformation our readers and viewers got was from our news, what would they know about youth andviolence? What wouldn’t they know? Assess whether the news gives readers and viewers enoughinformation to deliberate their community’s problems.

6. Examine the story selection process, and use restraint when necessary.Who qualifies as newsworthy in the newsroom? Who doesn’t? Of course, news outlets cannot stoptelling unusual stories, but they need not tell every one, thereby overwhelming readers and viewerswith a cumulative misrepresentation, especially when it means there is not room for less sensationalbut more important news. Is perceived victim "worthiness" the unspoken criteria for whether amurder is selected for the news? Reporters should ask themselves: Who qualifies as a worthy victimin my newsroom? Who doesn’t? If reporters limit themselves to reporting what just happenedwithout considering how that crime fits into larger patterns, the news is doomed to be distorted.


RECOMMENDATIONS FOR CHILD ADVOCATES, YOUTH GROUPS AND CIVILRIGHTS ORGANIZATIONS

1. Work With Reporters To Give A More Accurate Picture.Because of the juvenile justice system’s historic confidentiality protections, many child advocatesrefuse to talk to reporters about the context of individual cases. This places a serious andsometimes insurmountable burden on reporters when they try to tell a more complete story. Childadvocates and lawyers must develop more creative ways to tell a more contextual story about youthcrime without jeopardizing their clients’ confidentiality.

2. Engage Reporters, Editors, and Producers In Dialogue About Their Coverage.Child advocates, youth groups and civil rights groups need to begin to engage news outlets asconsumers to educate the news media about their needs and to jointly seek solutions to thecomplex issues raised in this and other reports about coverage of youth crime. We Interrupt ThisMessage, an advocacy group that conducted two of the studies discussed in this report, took itsfindings on disproportionate youth crime portrayals directly to the San Francisco Chronicle and theNew York Times. In 2000, Suffolk University’s law school held a forum which brought togetherreporters from the Boston Globe, the Boston Herald, and several electronic media with lawyers andcommunity groups that work with young people for a productive exchange of ideas about coverageof youth crime. In recent years, civil rights groups like the NAACP and the National Council of LaRaza have highlighted the scarcity of minority representation on network programming. Althoughthese efforts concerned entertainment media, similar efforts to educate news media aboutdepictions of minority offenders and victims may also be well received.

3. Make Data Available.Journalists need local data to make national problems relevant for their audiences. Share informationwith journalists so they can learn about local patterns, incorporate that information into daily stories,and give citizens the information they need to make better decisions about juvenile justice policy.

4. Prepare Young People To Speak for Themselves, and Let Them Do So.Give young people the training they need to speak confidently about the work they are doing toimprove their communities for themselves and others. Create situations where young people caninteract with journalists so they can begin establishing themselves as sources on their own.

5. Make Yourself Available to Reporters.Youth advocates and researchers cannot have an impact on the coverage of youth crime ifjournalists don’t know they exist, if they cannot find spokespeople when they need them, or ifadvovcates do not respond to their requests for information in a timely manner. Advocates’availability as experts or alternative voices prior to deadline can help shape coverage and putviolence among youth into its proper context.

Off Balance40

ENDNOTES

1 Males & Macallair 20002 Jones & Yamagata 20003 Juszkiewicz 20004 US OJJDP 19995 Pope & Feyerherm 19956 Bridges & Steen 19987 The National Crime Victimization Surveyis an annual survey of over 40,000Americans inquiring about victimizationsthey have experienced in the previous year.It is generally considered highly reliable bycriminologists because, unlike the FBI’sUniform Crime Reports, it does not rely onlyon crimes that become known to police, andtherefore is less affected by differential ratesof citizen reporting over time.8 Belden, Russonello & Stewart, 19999 Brooks, Schiraldi, & Ziedenberg 1999.10 When asked “Who commits most of theviolent crime these days?” 60 percent ofrespondents chose young people (Fairbank,Maslin, Maullin and Associates and theTarrance Group, conducted for TheCalifornia Wellness Foundation, May 1996).In California in 1996, juveniles made up13% of the state’s violent arrests, accordingto the California Attorney General’s Office.11 Males & Macallair 199912 Snyder & Sickmund 199913 Updegrave 199414 Lippmann [1922]196515 ABC News 199616 Braxton 199717 Farkas & Duffet 199818 quoted in Farkas & Duffet 199819 cf. McCombs & Shaw 199320 Snyder & Sickmund 199921 see Oliver 199422 Though we did our best to make thedatabase search exhaustive, there is no wayto ensure that 100% of relevant studieswere captured in our search. The authorswould appreciate any information onpublished studies that are not referenced inthis report.

23 Local law enforcement statistics cited inthis report include data from the ChicagoPolice Department and the CaliforniaDepartment of Criminal Justice.24 We found no studies of crime on radionews.25 Sheley & Askins 198126 We did not include studies published inlanguages other than English or about newsdistributed outside the US However, severalstudies turned up in our literature reviewthat indicate the patterns in other countriesare similar to the findings described here(c.f. Williams and Dickinson 1993). Fishmanand Weimann (1985), the only study wefound with a detailed examination of crimeand gender on the news, investigated howwomen and criminality were portrayed inthe major Israeli daily newspapers. Theyfound that gender depictions vary withdifferent crimes, and when stereotypesabout gender roles are violated, newsreports use lenient language that treatsfemale victims as “exceptional,” perhapsreinforcing stereotypes about aggression inwomen and men.27 Subervi-Vélez 199928 Chavez and Dorfman 1996-729 Vargas and dePyssler 199930 Turk et al. 198931 Dorfman et al. 1997; Gilliam et al. 1996;Klite 1998a, 1998b, 1995b; Bliss 1994;Romer et al. 199832 Center for Media & Public Affairs 1999,1997a, 1997b, 1997c, 1996, 1995;Dominick 197833 Grabe 1999, Barlow 1995, Windhauseret al. 199034 Antunes and Hurley 197735 Davis 195236 Sheley and Ashkins 198137 Chermak 199838 Johnstone et al. 199439 Sorenson et al. 199840 Sorenson et al. 199841 Gilliam et al. 1996:10


42 Barlow et al. 199543 Center for Media & Public Affairs 2000a44 Center for Media & Public Affairs 200145 Klite 1998a, 1998b, 1995a, 1995b46 Kaiser Family Foundation 199847 Barlow 199548 US Department of Justice 199949 US Department of Justice 199950 Braxton 199751 Krajicek 1998:4252 Bliss 1994, Dorfman et al. 1997,Dorfman & Woodruff 1998, Fenton 1910,McGill N.D., McManus & Dorfman 2000,Perrone & Chesney-Lind 199753 Barlow 199854 US National Advisory Commission onCivil Disorders 196855 Klite 1995c:456 Romer et al. 199857 See the University of Missouri School ofJournalism’s Guide to Research on Race andthe News for a comprehensive catalogue ofall aspects of research on race and the news(beyond the crime and violence category).58 Dulaney 196959 DeLouth & Woods (1996) found thatwhen suspects were from an ethnic minoritygroup, disclosure of the victim’s ethnicity(most often White) was more common.However, the authors cautioned that theirnumbers were too small to be conclusive.60 Barlow 1995, 1998; Dulaney 1969;Gilliam & Iyengar 2000; Gilliam et al. 1996;Entman 1990; Grabe 1999; Romer et al.1998; and Weiss and Chermak 1998 allfound minority overrepresentation ofperpetrators; Fedler and Jordan 1996;Rodgers et al. 2000, and Sorenson et al1998 found no overrepresentation ofminority perpetrators.61 Hawkins et al. 1995, Johnstone et al.1994, Pritchard & Hughes 1997, Romer etal. 1998, Sorenson et al. 1998, and Weiss &Chermak 1998 all found Black victimizationunderreported compared to Whites; onlyFedler & Jordan 1996 found no disparity.

62 Romer et al. 1998, Smith 1991,Johnstone et al. 1994, Sorenson et al. 199863 Pritchard & Hughes 199764 Weiss & Chermak 199865 Sorenson et al. 1998:1514. Note:Sorenson et al. controlled for theoverwhelming frequency of stories about theO.J. Simpson murder trial by counting allSimpson stories as one.66 Weiss & Chermak 199867 Klite 1995a68 Klite 1995b69 Gilliam et al. 199670 Gilliam et al. 199671 Entman 1990, 1992, 1994a72 Entman 199273 Romer et al. 1998:29674 Romer et al. 1998:298-975 USGAO 199076 Updegrave 199477 Romer et al. 1998 NOTE: Romer et al.used the FBI rate for homicides to compareto the vicitimization in crime stories (notjust homicide stories). Their comparison isnot exactly parallel, but we have included ithere because homicides dominate mediacrime coverage, and because in othercategories of crime Whites are more likely tobe victimized by other Whites, though at alower ratio than for homicide.78 Sorenson, et al. 199879 Entman 199080 Rodgers et al. 200081 Pritchard 198582 Fedler and Jordan 199683 quoted in Fedler and Jordan 199684 Greenberg et al. 198385 Greenberg et al. 198386 Alvear 1998, Carveth & Alverio 1996,Subervi-Vélez 1999, Vargas & dePyssler199987 US Department of Justice 200088 Entman 200089 Since juvenile proceedings wereconfidential in most states prior to the1990’s, detailed articles about youth crime

Off Balance42

were more difficult to write, and therefore,there was less to analyze in this respect.90 Alequin et al. 2001; Baizerman & Hirak1980; Barlow 1998; Bervera et al. 1998;Dorfman et al. 1997; Dorfman and Woodruff1998; Gilliam & Iyengar 1998; Humphries1981; Kunkel 1994; Males 1998; McManusand Dorfman 2000; Perrone and Chesney-Lind 1997, 1998; Song & Dombrink 1996;Stensaas 1961; Zatz 198791 Kunkel 1994, Dorfman et al. 1997,McManus and Dorfman 2000, Center forMedia and Public Affairs 2000b92 Baizerman and Hirak 198093 Baizerman and Hirak 1980:2194 Perrone and Chesney-Lind 1998, 199795 Perrone and Chesney-Lind 1997:10496 Crime Prevention and Justice AssistanceDivision 199897 Kunkel 199498 McManus and Dorfman 200099 Dorfman et al. 1997100 In this study, the youth categoryincluded people through age 24.101 Crime statistics here are for youthunder age 18 whereas the study analyzedyoung people age 24 and under. This doesnot affect the analysis dramatically sincepercentages are used for both cohorts. Forexample, a similar percentage of youngpeople under age 24 would be expected tohave been victims or perpetrators of violencein 1993. While we would expect that youngpeople age 24 and under would make up ahigher percentage of overall violence arreststhan young people under age 18, they wouldby no means make up 68% of violencearrests.102 Center for Media and Public Affairs2000b103 Center for Media and Public Affairs2000b:6104 Center for Media and Public Affairs2000b:4105 Kunkel 1994106 Baizerman and Hirak1980

107 Barlow 1998108 Barlow 1998:172109 Barlow 1998:173110 “Modern racism” is defined by Entmanas a more subtle discrimination thanblatant racism, which is typified by refusalof services, denied voting rights, verbalizedhostility and the like. Modern racism, on theother hand, is evident in attitudes thatassume Blacks as a group are lazy,dangerous, demanding, or otherwiseinferior. Cf. Entman 1990 & 1992.111 Dorfman and Woodruff 1998112 Graber 1990113 Alequin et al. 2001114 Center for Media and Public Affairs2000b115 Song and Dombrink 1996116 Similarly, Zatz (1987) argues that a“Chicano gang crisis” was created in part byPhoenix newspapers, which uncriticallyreported police department statementsabout increases in the number of Chicanogangs. However, Zatz does not present thenews content analysis data and so is notincluded in this discussion.117 Sorenson et al. 1998118 Bervera et al. 1998119 Cf. FBI Uniform Crime Reports 1999which shows that there are three timesmore under-18 murder victims killed byadults than by other youth; Office ofJuvenile Justice and DelinquencyPrevention, Juvenile Offenders and Victims:1999 National Update (same finding, p 20),and Juvenile Offenders and Victims: 1996National Report which shows that 60% ofthe violent victimizations of juveniles areperpetrated by adults, p 29; and Bureau ofJustice Statistics, Murder in Families, July1994 which shows that parents are sixtimes more likely to murder teenagechildren than the other way around.120 Males 1998121 Bervera et al. 1998, Alequin et al. 2001


122 Kunkel 1994, Dorfman et al. 1997,Dorfman & Woodruff 1998, McManus &Dorfman 2000. The Center for Media andPublic Affairs (2000b) study of youth finds“crime vicitimization” the top category foryouth portrayals, but they do notdifferentiate between youth or adultperpetrators in those victimizations.123 Males 1998124 Greiner 1997125 Although the juvenile homicide rate inthe summer of 1993 (6.5 per 100,000 youth)was higher than in the summer of 1992 (4.6)and lower than the summer of 1994 (7.6).126 Gilliam & Iyengar 1998127 Gilliam & Iyengar 1998:46128 Peffley et al. 1996129 Hurwitz & Peffley 1997130 Barlow 1998131 Gilliam & Iyengar 2000132 Gilens 1996133 Gilens is careful to point out that urbanpoor are not more Black than rural poor –29% and 30% respectively – but that poorWhites are less geographically concentrated,“spread around,” he says, in both poor andnonpoor neighborhoods.134 Gilens 1996:533135 Gilens 1996:537136 Lotke & Schiraldi 1996137 This is less true, of course, for parts ofCalifornia, Texas and other states with greatracial/ethnic diversity.138 Grenier 1997139 Dorfman 1994140 Cf. Gant and Dimmick 2000141 Maltz 1977142 US National Advisory Commission onCivil Disorders 1968:383143 Miller et al. 2001144 ABC news poll, 1996, published byPublic Agenda145 Brooks et al. 2000146 US DOJ FBI 1993 & 1998

147 Gilens (1996) for example, found thatphoto editors from Time and Newsweekoverestimate the number of Blacks inpoverty, though not as much as the generalpublic does.148 Song & Dombrink 1996, Zatz 1987, andPerrone & Chesney-Lind 1998149 Magar 1992150 Windhauser et al. 1990151 McManus and Dorfman 2000152 McManus and Dorfman 2000153 Gant and Dimmick 2000154 Entman 1990155 Greenberg and Schneider (1994)156 Deteriorating physical conditions havebeen associated with other public healthproblems such as Gonorrhea (cf. Cohen etal. 2000).157 Cf. Solis 1997; Monmaney andKrikorian 1998; Richisson 1999.158 Smith et al. 1999159 See Winett 1998 for a comprehensivesummary of public health research onviolence to date.160 Stevens 1998161 Wilde 1993162 Brown 2000163 Associated Press 2000164 Cf. Zillmann and Brosius 2000165 McManus and Dorfman 2000166 Shaw 2000: A8167 Bervera et al. 1998168 Cf. Rodgers and Thorson 2000169 Sorenson et al. 1998, Pritchard andHughes 1997170 Dulaney 1969:604171 Pritchard and Hughes 1997172 Hentoff 2000173 Cf. Montaño 1998174 Hyman 1998175 Grabe 1999176 Iyengar 1991177 Gilliam and Iyengar 2000:561178 Cf. Wallack et al. 2000

Off Balance44

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Appendix. Author and Year of Level One and Level Two Studies (Full citation is available in References.)

Level One Studies N=65 Level Two Studies N=45Antunes & Hurley 1977 Alequin et al 2001Barlow 1998 Alvear 1998Barlow et al 1995 Baizerman & Hirak 1980Chavez and Dorfman 1996-7 Bervera et al 1998

Chermak 1998 Carveath & Alverio 1996Cohen 1975 Center for Media & Public Affairs 2001Davis 1952 Center for Media & Public Affairs 2000DeLouth & Woods 1996 Center for Media & Public Affairs 1999Dennis & Sadoff 1976* Center for Media & Public Affairs 1997aDorfman et al. 1997 Center for Media & Public Affairs 1997bDorfman & Woodruff 1998 Center for Media & Public Affairs 1997cDulaney 1969 Center for Media & Public Affairs 1996Entman 1994a Center for Media & Public Affairs 1995Entman 1992 Chesney-Lind et al 1997Entman 1990 Dominick 1978Estrada 1997* Elias 1994*Ettema & Peer 1997 Entman 1994bFedler & Jordan 1996 Entman 2000Fenton 1910 Farkas & Duffet 1998Fishman & Weimann 1985* Gandy et al. 1996*Gant & Dimmick 2000* Garofalo 1981Gilliam & Iyengar 2000 Gilliam & Iyengar 1998*Gilliam et al. 1996 Greiner 1997Grabe 1999 Kaiser Family Foundation 1998Grabe 1996 Klite 1998aGreenberg et al. 1983 Klite 1998bHawkins et al. 1995 Klite 1995aHumphries 1981 Klite 1995bJerin & Fields 1998 Klite 1995cJones 1976 Krisberg 1995*Johnstone et al. 1994 Kunkel 1994Lester 1994 Lee 1994Liska & Baccaglini 1990* Lester & Miller 1996*Lule 1995* Lowry & Nio 1999*Martindale 1990* Magar 1992*Neild & Paylor 1996* Males 1999Oliver 1994* McLeod et al 1995*Oliver 1999* McManus & Dorfman 2000Peffley et al. 1996* McGill N.D.*Perrone & Chesney-Lind 1997 Osborn 1994Pride & Clarke 1978* Perrone & Chesney-Lind 1997Pritchard 1985 Reeves & Campbell 1994*Pritchard & Hughes 1997 Smith 1991Ramaprasad 1996* Turner N.D.*Requillo 1997* Wade 1998*Roberts 1975Rodgers et al. 2000Romer et al. 1998Sanchez-Jankowski 1994*Sentman 1983*Sheley & Ashkins 1981Song & Dombrink 1996Sorenson et al. 1998Subervi- Vé lez 1999Stensaas 1961*Tucker 1997*Turk et al. 1989Valentino 1999*Vargas & dePyssler 1999Welch et al. 1997Weiss & Chermak 1998Williams & Dickinson 1993*Windhauser et al. 1990Wright & Ross 1997*Zatz 1987

*These studies were ultimately eliminated from our analysis because they were primarily about single events (coverage of Mike Tyson, O.J. Simpson, etc.), "reality" shows, media effects, photographs only, non-U.S. news, or other topics rather than analyses of general news that included crime news content or coverage of youth.

THE AUTHORS

Lori Dorfman is Director of the Berkeley Media Studies Group where shedirects the group's work with community groups, journalists and publichealth professionals. Dr. Dorfman's current research examines how localtelevision news and newspapers portray youth and violence. She editedReporting on Violence, a handbook for journalists illustrating how to includea public health perspective in violence reporting, published by BMSG. Basedon this work, she is part of an interdisciplinary team that is conductingworkshops on violence reporting for newspapers and local TV news stations.Dr. Dorfman teaches a course for masters students on mass communicationand public health at the School of Public Health at the University ofCalifornia, Berkeley. She has published articles on public health and masscommunication, and co-authored Public Health and Media Advocacy: Powerfor Prevention, (Sage Publications, 1993) and News for a Change: AnAdvocates' Guide to Working With the Media (Sage Publications, 1999). Dr.Dorfman consults for government agencies and community programs acrossthe U.S. and internationally on a variety of public health issues includingviolence prevention and injury control, alcohol control, tobacco control,children's health, child care, childhood lead poisoning, affirmative action,nutrition and exercise, and women and HIV/AIDS.

Vincent Schiraldi is founder and president of the Center on Juvenile andCriminal Justice and its research and public policy arm, the Justice PolicyInstitute. He has a 20-year history of research, public education, and directservices in the criminal/juvenile justice field. Mr. Schiraldi served on theCalifornia Blue Ribbon Commission on Inmate Population Management,the National Criminal Justice Commission, and the San Francisco JuvenileProbation Commission and as an advisor to the California Commission onthe Status of African American Men. His research findings andcommentaries have been covered in print and on electronic mediathroughout the country including Nightline, the Today Show, the New YorkTimes, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Christian ScienceMonitor, the News Hour with Jim Lehrer, evening newscasts for ABC, CBS,and NBC; National Public Radio, CNN, and the BBC, among others. He isa regular commentator on Washington, DC's public radio station, WAMU.Mr. Schiraldi has a Masters Degree in Social Work from New York University.

Berkeley Media Studies Group

The Berkeley Media Studies Group operates out of the belief that the massmedia, especially the news, have a significant influence on people's beliefsand actions regarding public health and social issues and that the newsmedia can be a powerful force for change. BMSG works with communitygroups, journalists and public health professionals to harness the powerof the media to advance healthy public policy. BMSG studies the news andnews gathering to support professional education for journalists and mediaadvocacy training for grass roots and public health leadership groups. BMSGis a project of the Public Health Institute.

Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice/Justice Policy Institute

The Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice is a private, non-profitorganization devoted to reducing society's reliance on incarceration as asolution to social problems. The Center provides advocacy services anddirect services on behalf of youth and adults facing incarceration throughoutthe country, with offices in San Francisco, Washington DC, Baltimore, andPhiladelphia. The Justice Policy Institute (JPI) is the research and publicpolicy arm of the Center. Among other research topics, JPI has producedanalyses of the disproportionate confinement of minorities in adult andjuvenile institutions, the growing impact of America's drug war, the tradeoffbetween funding prisons and universities, and the impact of imprisoningyouth with adults.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to gratefully acknowledge the assistance of DianeCamper, Annie E. Casey Foundation; Meda Chesney-Lind, University of Hawaii;Frank Gilliam, PhD, University of California, Los Angeles; Mike Males, Ph.D.,University of California, Santa Cruz; John McManus, PhD, Berkeley MediaStudies Group; Mark Soler, President of the Youth Law Center; Susan Sorenson,PhD, School of Public Health, University of California, Los Angeles; LawrenceWallack, DrPH, Portland State University; Jason Ziedenberg, Senior Researcherat the Justice Policy Institute and staff from the Office of Juvenile Justice andDelinquency Prevention of the U.S. Department of Justice for their review ofand advice on this research. We would also like to thank Alea Brown, internwith the Justice Policy Institute, and Maria Len Rios, School of Journalism,University of Missouri, for their research assistance for this report, JillHerschman, Systems Administrator for the Justice Policy Institute for layout,graphics work, and internet posting of this report, and Phyllis Schultze,Information Specialist, Rutgers Law Library, for her database search assistance.

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