Picture this: It’s 5 o’clock on a Tuesday night. You just got home from work and you turn on the news, local or national. On the screen, you see police tape, mugshots, crying victims, and maybe some blood on the pavement. You might feel shocked at what you are seeing; the crime reporting might concern you.
Now imagine scenes like that are on every night.
Crime Reporting can be extremely important for two main reasons. The first is that the news informs people of some crimes in their area in order to keep them safe. The second reason is to potentially find viewers who know a suspect or have information about a crime that law enforcement should know. These two reasons show that crime reporting can be a helpful tool in keeping people safe, but only in moderation.
In news broadcasting, there is the saying, “if it bleeds it leads.” The phrase dates back to the end of the 1890s. William Randolph Hearst coined the phrase after seeing that the stories involving horrific incidents were the ones that caught the public’s attention.
As it turns out these stories are easy to produce. The Philadelphia Inquirer’s reporter Layla A. Jones commented on crime reporting in an article titled, “Lights. Camera. Crime.”
“Crime was cheap to cover. It was easy to cover,” says Jones. “[The assignment desk] said to the cameraman ‘You shoot the scene, you shoot the blood, you shoot the victims, whatever they got, and you can do it in 20 seconds.”
The easy-to-make nature to crime reports was not the only thing Jones found while looking deeper into her station’s crime reporting history. She also found that there was some racial discrimination happening with what crimes were being reported.
“This portrayal of urban environment definitely did fuel fear among viewers,” Jones said in an interview with Janine Jackson. “They basically said, we proved in the lab that the more people watched local television news, the more likely they were to associate criminality with being Black…”
This discrimination is detrimental to society because it is broadcasting an inaccurate pattern of crimes involving Black Americans. It therefore subconsciously influences its viewers. It engrains the idea that Black Americans are more likely to be involved in criminal activities than is in reality. According to a report done by ColorOfChange, “local news stations are representing 3 out of every 4 criminals as Black (75%), when the NYPD’s actual Black arrest rate is only 2 out of 4 people (51%).”
In addition to an increased amount of racial prejudice, crime reporting has also led viewers to believe that the crime rate is higher than it is. In an annual crime poll done by Gallup, over 50% of people believe there has been more crime than in previous years since 2001. This statistic does not align with FBI statistics that show that crime rates have mostly decreased.
These incorrect statistics most likely stem from the fact that increased amounts of crime reporting has led people to believe that there are increased amounts of crime. More specifically, the amount of crime reporting done over news broadcasts does not accurately represent the amount of crime occuring.
In addition, the amount of crime reporting sometimes leads to putting people in the spotlight for crimes that they did not commit.
For example, Darcell Trotter . According to “Last Week Tonight,” in 2012, a woman falsely accused Trotter and his brother of sexual assault. The woman later took back her claims and pleaded guilty to filing a false police report. The story made the local news but never included the information about the woman who filed the fake claim. Years later, Trotter had to call stations to have those stories removed.
Crime reporting can be important but it can just as easily be harmful.
This form of reporting should not be a cheap and easy way to fill 15 seconds in a broadcast when the impacts deeply signifcant.
Ultimately, news stations should think critically about the stories they include.
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