The public largely understands crime, criminal justice and social effects of crime via the media - just as Perry Mason created a generation of Americans who thought they understood how courts work, Americans indoctrinated by CSI and NCIS believe that DNA tests take seconds, and that crimes are readily solved in days, rather than months or years. However, this is usually recognized as fiction. Still, the Fourth Estate provides nearly all the insight the average citizen has to crime, so media selection of stories and opinion articles dramatically shape perceptions of the public, even when the reporting is biased and closer to editorial than objective journalism.
There are ready examples of where crime reporting by media is provided a bias. ABC ran a story 8-Sept-2010 "Eric Holder Tells Religious Leaders Burning Korans Is 'Dangerous'", and the article clearly makes a case for the growth of hate crimes against Islam, citing several examples (but falling just short of stating the growth), they let uncontested statements by third parties make the misleading statements. The article quotes Rev. Welton Gaddy, "This may be the civil rights issue of this generation..."
However, media watch-dogs pointed out that the FBI 2008 crime statistics (most recent at that time) show the following breakdown in religiously-motivated hate crime:
- 65.7% anti-Jewish
- 13.2% anti-other religion
- 7.7% anti-Islamic
- 4.7% anti-Catholic
- 4.2% anti-multiple religions/groups
- 3.7% anti-Protestant
- 0.9% anti-Agnsotic/Atheism/etc.
In reporting the article about hate crimes against Islam, the journalist should have consulted readily available crime statistics, and would have seen that 8x more anti-Semetic crimes occurred than hate crimes targeting Islam. As both Catholics and Protestants are Christian, hate crime against Christians is actually 10% higher than that against Islam. Further, only 19.5% of all hate-crime is religiously motivated, so this is scarcely the most pressing civil rights issue of our time. (Duzzett 2010)
Violent crime certainly gets attention by the public, and is a particular hot-bed of sensationalistic journalism, and one that creates fear and can drive policy. "If it bleeds, it leads" has long been the mantra of journalism, and what drove yellow journalism for decades. Sensational stories lead to increased readership and viewing, driving up advertising revenue and profits for the news media.
The current furor over the proposed gun ban and "assault weapon" crime is fraught with inaccuracies and slanted stories, and there are numerous public policy efforts underway, likely enabled by this coverage. As an example, Rupert Murdoch, CEO and chair of News Corporation (publisher of FoxNews and the Wall Street Journal), citing the Sandy Hook tragedy from that morning asked via Twitter on 12/15/2012, "Terrible news today. When will politicians find courage to ban automatic weapons? As in Oz after similar tragedy."
However, no automatic weapons were used in the murder, and automatic weapons are already stringently regulated in the US to the point that they can be considered banned. Though technically legal, they are exceptionally difficult to procure, and are regulated similarly to grenades and C4 plastic explosives. Only automatic weapons that were imported and registered with the BAFTE prior to 1986 can be bought, owned or sold. (Bennett, 2012)
The media jumped on the story. The Huffington Post reported, "Rupert Murdoch demanded tighter gun control in the aftermath of the horrific shooting in Newtown, Connecticut" (Huffington, 2012). Dan Byers of Politico also ran the story, "Murdoch calls for automatic weapons ban", again without mention of the actual state of gun laws forbidding automatic weapons, nor the fact that automatic weapons had nothing to do with the COnnecticut shooting. (Byers, 2012)
These articles, and others, established in the mind of the public and policymakers that "Assault Rifles", "Assault Weapons" and "Automatic Weapons" were utilized in the shooting, when that was not the case. This has created a furor to reinstate the failed 1994 Assault Weapons Ban with the stated purpose of stopping crime, despite FBI crime statistics showing rifles, of ALL types, committing 3%, 2.7%, 2.6%, 2.8% and 2.6% of murders in the years 2007-2011. (FBI UCR, 2012)
Naturally, public opinion shapes public policy. President Obama, when he introduced his 23 Executive Orders intent on implementing sweeping policy changes and constitutional challenges stated,
"The type of assault rifle used in Aurora, for example, when paired with high-capacity magazines, has one purpose, to pump out as many bullets as possible, as quickly as possible.... Weapons designed for the theater of war have no place in a movie theater." (Reuters, 2013)
President Obama is guarded by soldiers with assault rifles and high-capacity magazines. Presumably, those guards aren't there with the express purpose of killing as many people as possible, even though Mr. Obama had made that statement. It is demonstrable that the purpose of those firearms are defensive in nature. Further, an assault rifle was not used in Aurora, nor was that rifle or the firearms used in Connecticut designed for the theater of war, as no modern military issues semi-automatic civilian rifles as main battle rifles. (Morrissey 2013) Yet, those were the highlights that Reuters called out in their article "Obama: 'weapons designed for the theater of war have no place in a movie theater" (Reuters, 2013). The video clip was edited to focus on those claims, without commentary that those statements are incorrect or any fact checking. Many other articles abound with that same spin.
The same sensationalistic media coverage in the wake of a mass shooting, again where firearm policy changes were stridently suggested, was reported following the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz, two years ago. Pierre Thomas on the Sunday, 9-Jan-2011 ABC News' "This Week with Christiane Amanpour", reported:
"Saturday's shootings reflect a disturbing trend. Mass shootings have become commonplace since the virginia Tech massacre in 2007. There have been dozens of incidents where three or more people have been fatally wounded. Hundreds have died." (Thomas 2011)
Checking the FBI UCR doesn't provide data for mass shootings, nor does the Bureau of Justice's National Crime Victimization Study. However, criminologist James Alan Fox with Northwestern Universary has tracked down the numbers, and reported that the number of crimes in which four or more had died in shooting incidents were 23, 29, 27 in the years 2007-2009, the years for which Pierre Thomas would have been reporting (citing that criminologists typically establish a cut-off in these cases of four, not three).
So, with a 3-year total of 79 people in 4+ person shootings, reporting that "dozens of incidents" is inaccurate and does not appear a statement supported by research or statistics, since the most generous reading of the statistics would provide 79/4 = 19 incidents. Nor does the trendline support the statement that it is a "disturbing trend" or commonplace. In fact, the trend for 5 year periods starting 1976-2009 show 20.6, 16.8, 18.2, 23.0, 20.0, 21.0 and 25.5 average _incidents_ per year, so the actual trend seems to be within normal variance. Considering the population growth in the US over that period, the actual trend is flat to declining, on a per-capita basis. (Politifact 2011)
See chart, the trendline per capita is not an upwards trend:
(image created via Excel using data from article Politifact article and US Census data 1980-2010.)
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ABC, 8-Sept-2010. "Eric Holder Tells Religious Leaders Burning Korans Is 'Dangerous'" ABC News. Retrieved 22-Jan-2013 from http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/eric-holder-calls-pastors-plan-burn-korans-dangerous/story?id=11579359
Duzett, Allie Winegar, 8-Sept-2010. Media Artificially Inflate American "Islamophobia". Retrieved 22-Jan-2013 from http://www.aim.org/on-target-blog/media-artificially-inflate-american-islamophobia/
Huffington Post 12/17/2012 "Rupert Murdoch on Newtown Shooting: When Will We 'Ban Automatic Weapons'?" Retrieved 22-Jan-2013 from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/17/rupert-murdoch-gun-control-newtown_n_2315422.html
Byers, Dan. Politico.com 12/17/2012 "Murdoch Calls for Automatic Weapons Ban". Retrieved 22-Jan-2013 from http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2012/12/murdoch-calls-for-automatic-weapons-ban-152057.html
Morrissey, Ed, 17-Jan-2013 "NYT: Say, what exactly is an 'assault weapon,' anyway?" HotAir. Retrieved 22-Jan-2013 from http://hotair.com/archives/2013/01/17/nyt-say-what-exactly-is-an-assault-weapon-anyway/
Bennett, Brian, 16-Oct-2012. "Fact Check: Romney says it's illegal to have automatic weapons", Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 22-Jan-2013 fromhttp://articles.latimes.com/2012/oct/16/news/la-pn-romney-illegal-automatic-weapons-20121016
Thomas, Pierre 9-Jan-2011. http://www.politifact.com/personalities/pierre-thomas/
Politifact, Publication date unknown. "'This Week' report says hundreds have died in multiple-victim shootings". Tampa Bay Times, Politifact.com. Retrieved 22-Jan-2013 fromhttp://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2011/jan/11/pierre-thomas/week-report-says-hundreds-have-died-multiple-victi/
Reuters, 15-Jan-2013. "Obama: 'weapons designed for the theater of war have no place in a movie theater" Retrieved 22-Jan-2013 fromhttp://www.reuters.com/video/2013/01/16/obama-weapons-designed-for-the-theater-o?videoId=240532378
FBI Criminal Justice Information Services Division, "Uniform Crime Reports- Crime in the United States 2011: Expanded Homicide Data Table 8" (Pub. date unknown, 2012?) Retrieved 22-Jan-2013 from http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-8
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