NCJ Number
82073
Date Published
1981
Length
24 pages
Annotation
The attention of newspapers to crime as easy and popular news nurtures fear of crime among readers far out of proportion to the actual risk of victimization.
Abstract
The steady flow of crime news and the accessibility of police and crime reports make crime stories particularly useful to newspapers for training new reporters, evening out news flow, and balancing pages. The police function as gatekeepers for crime information, but since many crimes are not reported to police, the resulting picture of crime in the press is unrepresentative. Newspapers that display crime stories prominently are usually trying to reverse declining circulation. The primary consequences of such a policy are the lack of diversity in news and the general expansion in crime news coverage, resulting in papers competing to cover crime stories. The fear of crime among readers of newspapers that give prominence to crime stories is higher than among readers of newspapers that give less prominence to crime coverage. Similarly, more readers of newspapers that give unbalanced coverage to crime consider crime to be the major problem facing their neighborhoods. Given that fear of crime has been repeatedly shown to be out of proportion to actual crime danger and that fear of crime tends to restrict mobility and community participation, unbalanced press coverage of crime should be questioned as responsible, informative, and edifying journalism. Tabular data, 33 references, and 2 notes are provided. (Author summary modified)