Media Bias in Crime Reporting
In what ways do the media construct crime images?
In general, the media have tremendous power to influence public thought and opinion, such as by the choice of stories to report as well as by the specific manner in which they describe offenders, victims, and circumstances. When it comes to crime, the media construct images in various realms, including the relative frequency (and risk) of certain types of crimes and the public expectation about what groups of people are more likely to be offenders or victims of those crimes. For example, by choosing to report crimes featuring a white victim and a black offender, the media can portray one race as being composed of more offenders than the other and one race as being composed of more victims than the other. Similarly,...
For example, the notoriously Right Wing news outfit Breitbart.com recently included the following description used by one of its contributing editors to characterize the cultures from which so many people are entering the U.S. across its Southern border:
"Many Americans don't understand the power of word-of-mouth…
Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) is a program that was initiated by the International Association of Chiefs of Police in 1929 in order to provide a reliable and uniform crime statistics for the country. Generally, this program is a cooperative initiative for city, state, county, tribal, and federal law enforcement agencies to provide a country-wide perspective of crime. These agencies basically participate in the program through the provision of summarized reports
Criminology The Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program was set up by the International Association of Chiefs of Police in 1929 to produce reliable and uniform crime statistics for the country (FBI 2004). The task of collecting, publishing and archiving these statistics first belonged to the FBI. At present, these data come from almost 17,000 law enforcement agencies throughout the U.S.A. There are also annual publications that gather and print specialized facets of
This gap suggests that men commit the majority of crimes. While the gap exists for all crimes, it is the largest for violent crime, such as homicide, rape, and robberies, and the smallest for property crime. Unlike self-report data, official statistics and victimization reports generally describe the gender-gap as most apparent, as these types of crime reporting suggest large gaps in the number of crimes committed by men and
Crime a Socially Constructed One's conduct or deeds turn into a crime or an offence via a progression of societal or communal conditioning. The same deed can be regarded as wrong in one community and act of valor in another or in the same community at a different point in time. The lawful status of a deed-whether it is an offense-does not depend on its substance, but on the communal reaction
Crime Data Sources in the United States The collection of crime data in the United States is carried out through different approaches including Uniform Crime Reports and the National Incident-Based Reporting System, which also act as the two primary sources of crime data for crime reporting. The data obtained from these sources are used for research and documentation of crime status at the county, state, and national levels. Notably, the National
Crime and Violence: Cultural Beliefs and Biases Religion and Stereotyping Diverse sociocultural customs promote diverse forms of aggression; e.g., the conventional idea that males are authorized, by nature, to discipline or control females renders the latter susceptible to sexual abuse and spousal violence. Societal tolerance towards such hampers external intervention, preventing victims from protesting and seeking support. Sexual abuse reporting is also hampered by the stigma certain cultures attach to victims. Further,