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The Paradox of Public Concern About Crime:
An Interim Report
by
Salma Ghanem
Lecturer, University of Texas-Pan American
Ph.D. Candidate, University of Texas at Austin
and
Dixie Evatt
Ph.D. Student
University of Texas at Austin
Presented to
Mass Communication and Society Division
Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication
Washington D.C.
August 9-12, 1995
This research was supported in part by a Goldsmith Research Award from the Jones
Shorenstein Center at Harvard University to Dr. Maxwell McCombs for support of
graduate student research.
ABSTRACT
The Paradox of Public Concern About Crime:
An Interim Report
by
Salma Ghanem
Lecturer, University of Texas-Pan American
Ph.D. Candidate, University of Texas at Austin
and
Dixie Evatt
Ph.D. Student
University of Texas at Austin
This paper tests the agenda-setting influence of local media on growing public
concern about crime at a time when statistics showed crime rates were
decreasing. Findings suggest that the way the media told the crime story,
particularly as it relates to certain personal cues, changed dramatically in two
Texas cities at about the same time that public opinion polls detected an almost
unprecedented growth in public concern about crime. Although this analysis
stops short of a full understanding of the convergence of other media phenomenon
that may be affecting the polls, changes in the way crime was covered, taken
together, suggest reasons for the public to feel a greater sense of concern and
fear about crime.
ABSTRACT
This paper tests the agenda-setting influence of local media on growing public
concern about crime at a time when statistics showed crime rates were
decreasing. Findings suggest that the way the media told the crime story,
particularly as it relates to certain personal cues, changed dramatically in two
Texas cities at about the same time that public opinion polls detected an almost
unprecedented growth in public concern about crime. Although this analysis
stops short of a full understanding of the convergence of other media phenomenon
that may be affecting the polls, changes in the way crime was covered, taken
together, suggest reasons for the public to feel a greater sense of concern and
fear about crime.
1
The Paradox of Public Concern About Crime:
An Interim Report
Recent poll numbers about crime present an interesting paradox, a paradox that
has media scholars and public policy analysts alike searching for clues. In
just eight months (from June 1993 to January 1994), the percentage of the public
ranking crime as the biggest problem in the country jumped from five to 31
percent. At that same time, crime statistics indicate the number of American
households touched by crime was in a downward spiral (Morin, 1994).
The phenomenon is as true for local polls as for national. In Texas, where the
crime rate has been falling since 1991, public opinion polls show just the
opposite. Reports of the Department of Public Safety (1992 and 1993) show that
the rate of violent crime decreased 2.3 percent from 1991 to 1992 and 3.5 from
1992 to 1993. Total crime volume decreased 8.2 percent between 1991 and 1992 and
6.8 percent between 1992 and 1993.
In spite of these statistics, the Texas Poll recorded record levels of public
concern about crime, climbing from two percent in 1992 to a high of 37 percent
in 1994. The latest numbers show that about one-fourth of Texans polled still
think that crime is the most important problem facing the state.
Why is it that while the numbers say the average American is safer, concern
about crime is unprecedented? Many fingers point to the agenda-setting influence
of media on public concerns, in this situation concerns built largely from
images produced by media emphasis on crime.
The idea that our perception of crime can be manipulated by the media is by no
means a recent one. In his autobiography, Lincoln Steffens tells this story
about a New York crime wave that had Theodore Roosevelt hopping:
Parker, who was TwiseU and liked to mystify, explained that when the crime wave
was running high he inquired into it. . . .he asked for the police records of
crime and arrests. These showed no increase at all; on the contrary the totals
of crimes showed a diminution and the arrests an increase. It was only the
newspaper reports of crimes that had increased; there was a wave of publicity
only (Steffens, 1931, p. 290).
Six decades later another observer saw the same contradiction. "The recent
emphasis on crime news may seem ironic or even misplaced to some who have looked
at recent crime statistics and found them declining," says Jeffrey D. Alderman
of ABC News (1994).
Richard Morin of The Washington Post echoes AldermanUs concern. "So great is
the apparent disconnect between the image and the reality of crime that some
students of public opinion and politics contend that the public is once again
being stampeded by the news media," he says (Morin, 1994).
David Broder warns readers to be "wary when the press pumps up a crime scare
and Washington politicians jump on the bandwagon."
Even though conventional wisdom suggests the media play a role in the publicUs
high concern about crime, an investigation that relates the spectacular increase
in public concern about crime to the ways contemporary media coverage may have
changed is warranted.
Previous Studies
The ease with which the media can manipulate public opinion about crime that
fascinated the muckrakers, was visited again by Fishman (1980) in the mid-1970s.
He saw crime coverage, and the occasional crime wave manufactured by media hype,
as the product of two factors: reliance on readily available bureaucratic
sources, like police blotters, and the overriding need of reporters to organize
concepts within a larger context. In other words, to connect otherwise
unconnected incidents in some larger frame of reference.
Scholars in the fields of media studies, sociology and criminology have
established that the amount of crime coverage in newspapers and on television
sometimes bears little resemblance to reality. Their work shows that media
coverage exaggerates violence and that this exaggeration can be traced to an
increase in public fear about crime.
Newspapers: Even the Newspaper Association of America confesses that when it
comes to crime, the word alone can sell a newspaper (Albers, 1994). Scholars
and media critics agree. In Crime and the American Press, Lotz (1991) blasts
the coverage of crime: "Crime runs rampant in the American press; papers do such
a brisk business in crime that they are, in effect, advertising disorder" (p.
2). In his examination of newspapers in four American cities, Lotz claims that
the press does not reflect crime trends and that "crimes may make the front page
whether or not they are great in some absolute sense" (p. 34). He attributes
the distorted coverage to the definition of what constitutes news and
newspapers' need to fill the news hole.
One of the classics in the field is GraberUs (1980) content analysis of the
Chicago Tribune, which found a distortion between the amount of actual crime and
the emphasis given crime in the newspaper. Windhauser, Seiter and Winfree
(1991) looked at the relationship between actual crime rates and crime coverage
in 22 Louisiana cities and did not find a clear relationship between actual
crime and crime coverage.
Katz (1987) examined crime coverage in New York and Los Angeles papers over a
seven-year period and claims that all crime news stories that are published fit
one or more of four classic forms of moral problematics: personal competence and
sensibility; collective integrity; moralized political conflicts; and white
collar crime.
He explains that crime news has been present in newspapers for about 150 years
and that daily crime news serves as a "ritual moral exercise" where the public
works out individual perspectives on moral questions. He also notes the emphasis
in the news on violent crime.
Marsh (1991) went beyond the boundaries of the United States and conducted a
comparative analysis on the literature of crime coverage in newspapers in the
United States and other countries from 1960-1989. He found four areas in which
the coverage was similar. An over-representation of violent crimes and an
under-representation of property crimes seemed to be the norm in many countries.
The research also concludes that the percentages of violent crimes reported in
newspapers do not match official crime statistics.
Television News: The guiding principle in television newsrooms for a long time
was RIf it bleeds, it leads.S As Goodman (Nov. 27, 1994) says "violent crime is
made for the tube. . . . .the small-screen world is composed largely of villains
and victims." According to Edmonson (May, 1994), the American public cannot let
go of crimes "because television won't let go."
The author reports that the three major networks ran about five crime stories a
night in 1993. His statistics were based on a study conducted by the Center for
Media and Public Affairs in Washington, D.C.
An article in Mediaweek (Freeman, 1994) gave additional information about the
study, showing that stories about crime doubled on the network evening news in
one year. In 1992, there were 785 crime stories but the number jumped to 1,632
in 1993. The number of murder stories tripled from 104 in 1992 to 329 in 1993.
The study also found that murder and assault averaged 66 stories per month from
January to July of 1993 and jumped to an average of 111 stories per month for
the second half of the year.
RRealityS Shows: Researchers have gone beyond the examination of television
news and looked at what is commonly known as "reality shows." Fennel (December
7, 1992) documents the increased number of such television shows (such as
Unsolved Mysteries, Top Cops and I Witness Video ), suggesting that their
popularity may be due to economic forces. The cost of producing an episode of
one of these shows is approximately half the cost of producing a drama series
like Star Trek.
Not only are there more such shows, they also tend to emphasize violent crime.
Oliver (1994) conducted a content analysis of five Rreality-based" police shows:
America's Most Wanted, Cops, Top Cops, FBI, The Untold Story, and American
Detective. She found that violent crime was over-represented in these shows and
the percentage of crimes that were portrayed as solved was also quite high.
Effects Studies: This constant media diet of crime and violence is not without
consequences. Gordon and Heath (1991) found that the amount of newshole devoted
to violent crime is associated with fear of crime. Readers of newspapers with a
larger portion of their newshole devoted to crime are more fearful of crime than
are readers of newspapers in the same city that have a lesser proportion of
space devoted to crime coverage. A similar study by Williams and Dickinson
(1993) found a significant positive correlation between fear of crime and amount
of coverage independent of demographic factors.
Gebotys, Roberts and DasGupta (1988) found similar effects in television, a
significant positive relationship between media use and perceptions of crime
seriousness. High television news viewing was associated with high ratings for
crime as a serious public policy issue. They also noted that female judgments
of crime seriousness were higher than that of males.
Liska and Baccaglini (1990) examined fear of crime. Noting that media coverage
is unaffected by crime rates, they also concluded that homicide stories show by
far the strongest relationship to fear and pointed to the fact that while
homicide constituted only .02 percent of all index crimes, it constituted 29.9
percent of all crime stories. The researchers also found that local stories
correlate stronger with fear of crime than non-local stories.
Gerbner and his associates (1986) look at the publicUs perceptions of crime as
one of the factors in their extensive cultivation analysis work. They found
that in prime time, threats abound:
Crime in prime time is at least 10 times as rampant as in the real world. An
average of 5 to 6 acts of overt physical violence per hour menace over half of
all major characters (p. 26).
Estep and MacDonald (1983) focused specifically on primetime crime-related
shows and found that there was an exaggerated focus on murder, robbery and
assault. This over-representation of violent crime as compared to property
crime, argued the researchers, maximizes the fear of crime within the public.
Consequences for the audience also were measured by Schlesinger (1993). After
interviewing the audience for the reality-based show Crimewatch UK, which airs
in England, Schlesinger found one in three respondents thought the show made
them feel more cautious about going out alone in the dark. They also believed
other people were afraid of crime as a result of watching the program.
Other researchers examined the effects of the media's coverage of crime beyond
the relationship between fear and crime. Pritchard (1986) studied the
agenda-setting effect of crime news on prosecutors in the district attorney's
office in Milwaukee County, Wisconsin. He found that the average length of
stories about a case was the strongest predictor of whether prosecutors engaged
in negotiations for homicide cases.
Carlson (1983) looked at the possible link between crime show viewing by
preadults and attitudes toward civil liberties and concluded that crime show
viewing is associated negatively with support for civil liberties.
Theoretical Framework
When Graber (1984) set out to explain the difference between agenda-setting and
agenda-building, she might have had crime coverage in mind. She said
The media set the agenda when they are successful in riveting attention on a
problem. They build the public agenda when they supply the context that
determines how people think about the issue and evaluate its merits (p. 264).
McCombs calls this process of giving issues context and texture the Rsecond
dimension of agenda-settingS (McCombs, 1994). This process is one he had
alluded to earlier, saying:
News is not just rational discourse, not just educational presentations on the
issues of the day. News has tone and drama. News communicates much more than
the facts. A psychologist would say that news messages are both cognitive and
affective. A journalist would say that the news is a blend of information and
entertainment (McCombs, 1992).
Since other researchers have established a clear agenda-setting pattern to
media crime coverage, we elected to look beneath the generic issue of crime
coverage to this second dimension.
Instead of attempting to measure the changes in public salience of crime as
purely an effect of changing amounts of crime coverage, we designed a study to
look for other attributes of coverage that may affect the way the public sees
the issue. In this sense, we believe we are leaving the theoretical realm of
early agenda-setting studies to embrace the conceptual underpinnings of framing
theory.
Framing is probably one of the most important yet most elusive concepts in mass
communications research. It is important because it is a component in the
formation of public opinion. According to Price (1992), people form opinions
based on more than information. Opinions also are affected by beliefs,
attitudes and group identification, all of which may be molded in the way a
story is told. . .the way it is framed. Gamson and Modigliani (1989) say "Media
discourse is part of the process by which individuals construct meaning" (p. 2).
Our study will use standard content analysis techniques to look for the ways
these meanings might be effected in the construction of crime stories.
In short, this study extends beyond traditional content analysis and the basic
agenda-setting hypothesis. The emphasis here is on the exploration and
elaboration of a Rsecond dimensionS agenda-setting hypothesis, which, in generic
form, asserts that the attributes and frames of news stories influence the
pictures of news stories in peopleUs minds about such issues as crime. Five
specific attributes and forms are detailed in the methodology section. Although
the major contribution of this study is the exploration and elaboration of this
second dimension of agenda-setting, our content analysis also yields a test of
the basic agenda-setting hypothesis, which asserts that the increased salience
of crime on the public agenda is the result of increased crime coverage on the
media agenda.
Methodology
We collected crime coverage data for newspapers and local television news shows
in the two most populous Texas cities: Dallas and Houston. The study was
limited to Texas because we wanted to test for a direct connection between news
coverage and poll data. Since there is no truly national newspaper, we decided
to test for effects in a single large state.
To control for the possibility of intervening variables affecting results, we
elected to measure media coverage in selected weeks immediately preceding
statewide public opinion polls conducted by the Texas Poll. In each quarterly
opinion poll, 1,000 randomly-sampled respondents were asked to name the most
important problem facing Texas.
As shown in Table I, the proportion who named crime as the most important
problem grew from a quite modest two percent in 1992 to double digits a year
later. Today, crime continues to hold a commanding position on the state
agenda.
Table I
The percentage of respondents who said crime
was the most important problem facing Texas.
Date of Poll
Summer 1992 2%
Fall 1993 15%
Winter 1994 37%
Spring 1994 36%
Summer 1994 29%
Fall 1994 22%
Winter 1995 24%
Because of continuing public concern over crime and because the relationship of
mass media content to this public concern is a complex matter, this paper is an
interim report of an ongoing project. At this point, we do not have all media
content data in hand for the six quarters in which public concern about crime
was measured by the Texas Poll at 15 percent or more. This interim report
details trends in Texas newspapers over four time periods, trends in local
television news over three time periods, and trends in national network coverage
over six time periods. Data for additional time periods and for additional
media will be added as the project progresses.
Newspapers: We coded all crime-related stories in the Dallas Morning News and
the Houston Chronicle for the week prior to each of four polling dates, as
follows:
Time 1: July 25 to 31, 1992
Time 2: October 3 to 9, 1993
Time 3: January 30 to February 5, 1994
Time 4: April 10 to 16, 1994. 2
Time 1, which occurred before the sudden climb in public concern detected in
the polls, was used as a control or benchmark against which changes in coverage
could be measured. A total of 947 news stories was coded.
The broadest possible definition of crime was applied in this process. Stories
about actual crimes as well as stories about such tangent issues as gun control
and prison reform were included within the scope of the study. We assumed that
public feelings about these topics would converge into one overarching concern:
crime.
Initially, we had approximately 75 categories of crime stories. We collapsed
them into the following categories: murder, robbery, gun control, rape, assault,
riot, official misconduct, vandalism, police brutality, kidnapping, child abuse,
prison/prison reform, drugs/illegal substances, gangs/juvenile crime, crime as a
public issue and sexual harassment. Any remaining category with fewer than 10
stories was then collapsed into two additional categories depending on whether
or not these remaining stories related to a crime against a person. These last
two categories were: Rother crimes against personS or Rother crimes.S
To measure the attributes of stories, we collected the following data for each
news item:
% Framing Mechanisms-- This includes the placement or play of the story (on the
page and within the issue), the size of the headline and whether or not the
story was augmented with visuals, pull quotes or other graphics that might cause
readers to notice the item or give it greater weight or importance.
% Site -- Whether or not the crime or incident occurred within the circulation
area of the newspaper.
% Relationship -- This measured whether the victim(s) were connected in any way
to the perpetrator(s). Three classifications were used: Rconnected,S for
instances where they knew each other personally; Runconnected,S for instances
where they had no personal connection but where the relationship may have put
the victim in harmUs way; and RrandomS for random acts of violence. For
instance, an assault on a spouse would be Rconnected,S the shooting of a bank
clerk during a robbery would be Runconnected,S and the victim of a drive-by
shooting would be Rrandom.S
% Sense of Social Distance -- This measures whether the average reader would
feel personally threatened by the nature of the reported crime. The term
RdistantS referred to a crime report for which there was great sense of social
distance. In other words, RdistantS designated a story in which the average
person would not feel threatened. The term RcloseS referred to a report in
which the average person would feel threatened. For instance, a story about a
series of car jackings downtown would be Rclose.S
% Sense of Protection -- This is a measure of whether or not the news item gave
a sense that the legal system or police had the situation under control. For
instance, if the criminal was apprehended or a trial is underway, the story
would give a sense of being Rprotected.S On the other hand, a story about a
crime where the suspect is unknown or on the loose would give a sense that the
public was Runprotected.S
Comprehensive coding instructions were developed to improve reliability of
interpretations. An intercoder reliability check produced a reliability
coefficient of 80.8 percent.
Local Television News: To measure local news crime coverage, we relied on
broadcast summaries of local news programming produced by Radio TV Reports of
New York and available through the Lexis-Nexis on-line database (RTVRPT).
Founded in 1936, Radio TV Reports is part of Competitive Media Reporting. The
data base contains synopses of local news programs in 15 national media markets.
Unfortunately, the data base has been available on-line only since 1993 for the
Dallas market. The Houston market was not added until 1995.
Therefore, to measure local television news coverage, we coded reports for the
5 p.m. newscasts of two Dallas-area stations: the ABC affiliate (WFAA-TV) and
the CBS affiliate (KDFW-TV). Again, time periods were picked to coincide with
poll dates, as follows:
Time 1: Not Available
Time 2: October 4 to 8, 1993
Time 3: January 30 to February 4, 1994
Time 4: April 11 to 15, 1994.
While every attempt was made to match time periods used in the newspaper coding,
on-line news summaries for some dates, especially weekend newscasts, were not
available.
We measured the total number of stories in each newscast (excluding weather and
sports) and the number of stories relating to crime. Each crime story was coded
as to topic, site, relationship, sense of protection, and sense of social
distance, using the coding definitions applied to newspapers and explained
above.
Network Television News: Finally, we analyzed data collected by Tyndall
Reports (ADT Research, 1994) on the number of minutes the network news
programs devoted to crime over six time periods.
Results and Discussion of Newspaper Findings
Not only did the number of crime stories in the two newspapers increase over
the periods studied, but, as was the case in studies by other researchers, the
newspaper crime stories we looked at were heavily weighted toward violent crime,
particularly murder.
Table II shows the growth in the number of newspaper stories from the control
period (Time 1) through the three subsequent time periods.
Table II
Total number of newspaper crime stories
in four time periods.
Time Period Number of Crime Stories
1 205
2 226
3 284
4 232
What was interesting was the way the focus on murder grew over the time periods
studied. The percentage of murder stories jumped from 22.5 percent at Time 2 to
35.5 percent at Time 3.
Instead of reporting raw numbers, we calculated SpearmanUs correlations to
demonstrate the trend of change over time. The time periods were treated as
scores which were correlated with the frequencies for each variable we tested.
Using this method, the higher the correlation, the more the frequencies
increased at a steady pace over time. Rank order correlations for each crime
category over the four time periods are found in Table III.
Table III
Trends in newspaper crime stories by topic over four time periods
Assault Child Abuse Drugs Fraud Gangs
Time .74 .80 .11 .32 .63
Gun Control Kidnapping Murder Official Misconduct Police Brutality
Time .40 .40 .60 -.40 -.80
Prison Reform Crime as a Public Issue Rape Riot Robbery
Time .95 .32 -.40 -.20 -.40
Sexual Harassment Vandalism OVERALL
Time -.63 .80 .80
These correlations suggest a pattern of steadily increasing coverage for
certain violent and random crimes and criminal issues -- assault, child abuse,
gangs, murder and prison reform.
We also looked at the other variables in crime story coverage. Five are
particularly interesting. We calculated trends for those stories in and those
stories out of the newspaper circulation area over the four time periods. The
results were .60 and -.40 respectively. This suggests a shift in focus toward
local crime stories.
Table IV shows the trends for these two variables as well as three other
personal cues: (1) the sense of the relationship between the victim and the
perpetrator (connected, unconnected or random); (2) the sense of social distance
between the newspaper reader and the crime (distant or close); and (3) the sense
of protection afforded by the legal system (protected or unprotected).
Table IV
Time trends for relationship of victim and perpetrator,
the sense of social distance and the sense of security and location of crime
Connected Unconnected Random
Time -.40 .80 .63
Close Distant
Time .74 -.20
Protected Unprotected
Time .40 .80
In Area Out of Area
Time .60 -.40
These correlations suggest that over time there was a steady increase of
coverage devoted to crimes for which there was no connection between the
perpetrator and the victim (unconnected and random). A steady increase in
coverage also was seen for crimes that occurred in the newspaperUs circulation
area (in area) , crimes that would give the feeling that the legal and police
system was not providing protection (unprotected) and those in which the reader
might feel personally threatened (close).
We also examined each article for the presence of graphics, photographs, pull
quotes and subheads. These elements have been referred to as Rframing
mechanismsS which serve to emphasize certain stories and frames (Tankard, et al,
1991). The time trends for framing mechanisms are shown in Table V.
Table V
Time trends for framing mechanisms: placement on page one of the paper,
placement on inside front page, placement above the fold, presence of graphics,
photographs, pull quotes and subheads.
Story on Page One Story on Inside Front Page Story Above Fold
Time -.20 .80 .60
Graphics Photographs Pull quotes Subheads
Time .40 .40 .80 -.10
These data suggest that some of the framing mechanisms employed by newspapers
-- particularly pull quotes, location on the inside front page and placement of
the story above the fold -- were used with greater frequency for crime stories
over time. Some of this change could be attributed to a change in the
newspaperUs graphic style. Regardless of the motivation, however, use of such
devices would tend to increase the prominence of crime stories over time.
Overall, these findings suggest that between the control or benchmark period
(Time 1) and the later periods, the two newspapers changed the nature and scope
of their coverage of crime. They not only reported more stories, but the stories
were more violent and more often about local crimes. The crimes reported in the
news seemed to be more random and the number of stories where the average person
would feel personally threatened or unprotected increased.
Finally, these analyses suggest that not only were there more stories,
presented in a more threatening manner, but they were given greater graphic play
since the use of all but two of the framing mechanisms we measured increased
over time. More stories were placed on the inside front pages and above the
fold and more were published with accompanying graphics, photographs and pull
quotes. If, indeed, such framing mechanisms work as devices of emphasis then
we could conclude that crime stories were given more emphasis between Time 1 and
Time 4.
Results and Discussion of Findings Relating to Local Television News
Although there was a much smaller universe of crime stories to analyze, the
results for the two local Dallas television newscasts mirrored that of the two
newspapers. Not only did the number of crime stories aired by the two stations
grow, but they consumed a greater portion of the overall newshole, as shown in
Table VI. The overall trend in crime coverage is, however, curvilinear.
As with newspapers, the television stories on crime presented a greater sense
of being unprotected and threatened. Here the increases not only are sizable,
but the trend also is sharply monotonic or near so.
Table VI
Total number of local television crime stories, percentage of all stories that
dealt with crime, percentage of crime stories that gave a sense of being
"unprotected" and percentage of crime stories in which the average viewer would
feel personally threatened "close."
Number of crime stories % of total stories that dealt with crime % of crime
stories that were unprotected % of crime stories that were close
Time 2 11 8.4% 9.1% 36.4%
Time 3 53 28.5% 47% 52.8%
Time 4 19 15.1% 63.2% 52.6%
Results and Discussion of Findings Relating to National Network News
Rather than counting the number of stories, the Tyndall Reports (ADT Research
1994) counts time. Results show a steady increase in the number of minutes the
three national network evening news shows devote to crime coverage, growing from
an aggregate of 956 minutes in 1991 to 2,058 minutes in 1994.
As shown in Table VII, we aggregated monthly totals from Tyndall into six time
periods. These time periods represent the three months just before each of six
Texas Polls in which the number of respondents who said crime was the most
important problem facing Texas was 15 percent or more. The large increase in
coverage, beginning in June 1994, may be attributable to extensive national news
coverage of the murder trial of O.J. Simpson.
Regardless of the motivation for the change, it is clear that the daily diet of
crime coverage dished out on the national television networks is increasing.
The correlation between time periods and number of minutes devoted to crime
coverage was .60.
Table VII
Total number of minutes devoted to crime coverage
on three network evening news programs over six time periods.
Time Period Months Minutes of Crime
Coverage
1 August, September, October 1993 443
2 November, December 1993 and January 1994 466
3 February, March, April
1994 341
4 May, June, July
1994 674
5 August, September, October
1994 633
6 November , December 1994
and January 1995 534
Comparison Of Crime Coverage With Texas Poll Data
Up to this point, we have described the trends over time in public concern
about crime and the trends over time in media coverage of crime. We began with
traditional frequency measures of crime coverage in Texas newspapers, local
Texas television news and national network news. Both the history of content
analysis and the accumulation of agenda-setting studies document the importance
of these frequency measures. But because the theory of agenda-setting is about
the influence of the media agenda on the public agenda, we extended our analysis
beyond frequency measures of crime to the media agenda to look at other cues
that may account for and explain the sudden surge of concern about crime to
unprecedented levels among Texans.
The three Rpersonal cuesS that we added to the traditional agenda-setting
dynamic are the degree to which a member of the audience reading or viewing
crime stories would feel personally threatened or unprotected and a sense that
these stories about crime are especially pertinent because they are from the
local area. The final step in the analysis demanded by the agenda-setting model
is, of course, to compare the fit between the trends in public opinion and the
trends in the media agenda. We began with the newspaper measures, comparing the
Texas Poll in Time Periods 1 through 4 with those newspaper variables for which
our earlier analysis detected a steady increase over time. A similar analysis,
for Time Periods 2 through 4, was also calculated for variables relating to
local television news coverage. Results are shown in Tables VIII and IX.
The convergence of these findings is striking and clearly validates both the
traditional frequency measures of agenda-setting and the addition of Rpersonal
cuesS in this analysis to explain the sudden escalation of public concern about
crime.
First, for the newspapers the trend in the total number of crime stories
perfectly parallels the trends in public opinion (and for four specific
categories of crime as well as the topic of prison reform the trends are highly
similar). Also showing perfect parallels to public opinion are the trends in
stories about (a) crimes in which the perpetrator and victim are unconnected and
(b) situations in which the reader would feel unprotected. Showing a
near-perfect correspondence to public opinion are the trends in stories
characterized by minimal social distance and in stories about local crime.
Similar findings emerge from the local television news analysis. Simple
frequency counts, the total number of crime stories and the percentage of crime
stories in the newscasts, as well as the personal cue social distance (how
personally threatened the viewer would feel) have trends that are in perfect
correspondence with the trend of public opinion. In short, these findings
suggest that the pace and direction of changes in public attitudes about crime
measured by the Texas Poll closely paralleled that of changes in emphasis,
topics and style of local media coverage.
In contrast, the trends in network television coverage of crime do not parallel
the trends in public opinion in Texas at all. Although more detailed analysis
at a later time may reveal a contribution by network television to the rise of
public concern about crime, it seems abundantly clear that local media have been
the primary agenda-setters for Texans concern about crime.
Table VIII
Correlation of changes in emphasis between Texas Poll results relating to crime
and variables measured in newspaper coverage in four time periods.
Description of Variable Correlation With
Texas Poll Data
(Spearman Rho)
Total Number of Crime Stories 1.00
Crime Stories Dealing With Assault .74
Crime Stories Dealing With Child Abuse 1.00
Crime Stories Dealing With Gangs .90
Crime Stories Dealing With Murder .80
Crime Stories Dealing With Prison Reform .60
Perpetrator and Victim Were Unconnected 1.00
Reader Would Feel Personally Threatened (Close) .94
Reader Would Feel Unprotected 1.00
Crime Occurred In Circulation Area
(In Area) .80
Table IX
Correlation of changes in emphasis between Texas Poll results relating to crime
and variables measured in local television news coverage in three time
periods.
Description of Variable Correlation With
Texas Poll Data
(Spearman Rho)
Total Number of Crime Stories 1.00
Percentage of Stories Relating to Crime 1.00
Viewer Would Feel Unprotected .50
Viewer Would Feel Personally Threatened (Close) 1.00
Conclusion and Implications
Although we have data for only three time periods for television and four for
newspaper crime coverage, we felt it worthwhile to make this interim report on
an ongoing project since our initial analysis seemed to identify some key
explanatory variables.
Our findings to date suggest that the way the media told the crime story
changed dramatically in two Texas cities, a change that coincided with an almost
unprecedented growth in the publicUs concern about crime. Changes in the way
crime was covered, taken together, suggest reasons for the public to feel a
greater sense of concern about crime. An argument can be made that when
individuals hear about crimes that are violent and close to home and where the
report suggests they are not protected by the system or where they feel
personally threatened, this kind of information would be translated by them into
heightened concern about crime.
This analysis, however, stops short of a full understanding of the convergence
of other media phenomenon that may be affecting the polls. Future research must
take into account not only traditional news sources, but encompass a full
understanding of the public media diet. Ranging beyond the mainstream daily
media, this diet often includes the full spectrum of television news magazines
and reality shows, which frequently blur the boundary between information and
entertainment, as well as the entrenched entertainment role of crime in film and
television programming.
In addition, greater attention needs to be paid to an emerging genre of
part-news/part-entertainment shows referred to collectively as Rreality shows.S
This genre blends the reality of the news with the entertainment of fiction.
Beginning with America's Most Wanted in 1988, similar shows have shown up on
all four networks and several others are in syndication. Only three
reality-type shows were broadcast in the 25 years before AmericaUs Most Wanted
aired. Since 1988, the number has grown to 23.3
The bread-and-butter of such shows, and other forms of tabloid television, is
crime -- dramatic, violent crime. Although their research was done in defense
of the studioUs own reality film, Natural Born Killers, Warner BrothersU
documentation of four monthUs content of these shows in 1994 is chilling:
From Diane SawyerUs interview of Charles Manson to Stone PhillipsU interview of
Jeffrey Dahmer -- between Feb. 17 and May 27 of this year alone --
Treality-basedU tabloid network news shows such as TInside Edition,U THard Copy,
TA Current AffairU and TPrime Time LiveU broadcast 45 stories that graphically
focused on murders, spree killers and their victims. (Weinraub, 1994)
The research presented here is but one clue in understanding the paradox now
before media scholars. Before we truly understand the breath and scope of the
mediaUs role in heightened public concern about crime, scholars will have to
adopt strategies to explore more than news coverage.
We believe full understanding lies in research that expands beyond news to
encompass that which is played out as fantasy as well as reality, news as well
as entertainment. To understand the phenomenon, scholars likewise will have to
blend theories, taking part of the answer from agenda-setting theory (which
deals primarily with news) and part of the answer from cultivation theory (which
deals primarily with entertainment).
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3This number is based on a list we compiled of all television shows that dealt
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LIST OF TABLES
Table I: The percentage of respondents who said crime was the most
important problem facing Texas.
Table II: Total number of newspaper crime stories in four time periods.
Table III: Trends in newspaper crime stories by topic over four time
periods.
Table IV: Time trends for relationship of victim and perpetrator, the
sense of social distance and the sense of security and location of crime.
Table V: Time trends for framing mechanisms: placement on page one of the
paper, placement on inside front page, placement above fold, presence of
graphics, photographs, pull quotes and subheads.
Table VI: Total number of local television crime stories, percentage of
all stories that dealt with crime, percentage of crime stories that gave a
sense of being RunprotectedS and percentage of crime stories in which the
average viewer would feel personally threatened Rclose.S
Table VII: Total number of minutes devoted to crime coverage on three
network evening news programs over six time periods.
Table VIII: Correlation of changes in emphasis between Texas Poll results
relating to crime and variables measured in newspaper coverage in four time
periods.
Table IX: Correlation of changes in emphasis between Texas Poll results
relating to crime and variables measured in local television news coverage
in three time periods.