[Dryerase] Shark Attacks, Snipers and Thugs, Oh My!

[annie v]

Shark Attacks, Snipers and Thugs, Oh My!
By Emily Reinhardt

Mothers use their bodies as human shields, trying to
protect their children as they take them to school.
Drivers glance around anxiously as they gas up their
cars. The streets are deserted as fearful residents
stay indoors, peering into their television sets for
the latest news. This is not Kabul or some other
war-torn city, but suburban Washington, D.C. in the
midst of last month’s sniper attacks. 

The sniper attacks launched a media blitz and an
accompanying public panic. It’s cause and effect: the
media leaps onto a story or theme and the public
fearfully watches and feels informed and entertained.
Prior to snipers, there were child kidnappings; before
that, there were missing interns, shark attacks,
flesh-eating bacteria, school shootings, mailmen going
“postal,” and countless others. 

News (especially local television news) often
influences a person’s perceptions of the world around
them. Unfortunately, the news often makes individuals
feel unnecessarily afraid of their streets, their
cities, their country and their world. 

“The majority of Americans who get information on
which to base decisions — whether it’s voting
decisions or what policies to support or what to be
afraid of in the world — get that information from the
news,” writes Lori Dorfman of the Berkeley Media
Studies Institute in the Los Angeles Times. “When the
news limits the information that people get, that
leads to distortion.” 

According to a Roper survey of television viewing, a
plurality of Americans get their news from local TV
broadcasts. In Los Angeles and New York, two of the
biggest markets, local television news is watched
three times as much as the national news broadcast.
Local television news is also the most saturated of
news sources with stories about violent crime; 66
percent of stories covered in 56 major markets of
local news are crime stories. Stories concerning
violent crime runs every three minutes during the
local news broadcasts in Los Angeles. 

The sheer density of crime stories gives viewers a
misguided sense of the real statistics on crime: the
numbers have gone down steadily in the last 20 years.
In 2001, violent crime was at its lowest numbers since
1973. Youth crimes dropped over two-thirds from 1993
to 1998. Homicide dropped 33 percent in the Nineties,
while national news increased its coverage of violent
crime 600 percent. 

Prior to September 11, most Americans felt that
“violent crime” was one of the worst problems facing
the nation. 62 percent of Americans felt “desperate”
about crime during the Nineties. Yet 76 percent of
these “desperate” people had never themselves been
victims of violent crime, according to a Harvard
survey, but were concerned about crime “from the TV.”
In poll after poll, “crime” topped the list of
Americans’ concerns. 

Policy-makers and poll watchers took note. “When
mainstream media over-reports on violent crime, people
end up with a distorted sense of their world culture,”
said Rachel Coen of the media watchdog group Fairness
and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR). “[That the stories
are] more frivolous is annoying, but there are real
political consequences to the media concentration on
these stories.” 

Larger than crime statistics and surveys is the
climate of fear that these stories create. They
contribute to specific attitudes about race and youth
and justify biased attitudes and legislative actions.
Though four times as many people are hit by lightning
each year than were shot by the sniper, the D.C.
community’s reaction was to shut down school
activities and refuse to go out of doors. 

“I now only gas up at my local gas station… surrounded
by buildings and people. I will not go to one that is
out in the open near a busy street,” said one Tacoma
Park, Maryland resident in an online session with the
Washington Post. Another Maryland resident had an even
more extreme reaction: “I use my body as a shield when
I drop off my son at school.” 

Local crime stories are only the icing on the cake.
The media writ large has produced many “theme” stories
over the years that were over-dramatized or later
proven untrue. The difference now is that the amount
of television, print and internet media far surpasses
anything known previously. Stories stay longer in the
public consciousness and the fear is more intense. 

“Part of the problem is the 24-hour news climate.
There were no cable 24-hour news channels 25 years ago
and these channels have the need to fill space,” said
Coen. “It’s news as a product, trying to make a profit.”

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