Racism and bias in media

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, by choosing to report more on particularly gruesome crimes, the media can establish the public belief that violent crime is more common than non-violent crime even if that is not necessarily the case.

Give examples of media accounts that seem to involve a cultural spin and how that might influence public opinions.

In choosing the way they describe crimes, the media have the power to add a cultural spin that appeals to the beliefs and opinions of its base. 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 in Latin America; it's like gossip in a small American town times ten. Word about anything, especially friends or family members going though the northbound migration or southbound deportation process, spreads very quickly."

(Tate, 2014)

While not necessarily the most pejorative language, it nevertheless establishes the people from the nations in question as different from Americans and in a way that promotes the most narrow-minded view of "illegals."