| Chapter 1
The
Crime Beat
By
Dave Krajicek
The Public-Health Perspective
Lori Dorfman, director of the California-based Berkeley Media Studies
Group, advocates a public-health approach to reporting violence.
She says news consumers would be better informed if crime reporting
were less anecdotal and episodic and more contextual and scientific.
That means more big-picture context and less focus on details,
which she sometimes sees as picayune embellishments – the
color of a victim's socks, for example. Dorfman suggests increased
attention to epidemiological "risk factors" affiliated
with violence, such as alcohol and drug use or socioeconomic status.
And she says reporters should dish fewer fears-and-tears stories
and devote more time and space to investigations of the consequences
of violence, both from the perspective of families and communities
and in terms of taxpayer costs to the health-care and criminal justice
systems.
The Berkeley Media Studies Group conducted a yearlong analysis
of stories about youth violence in three large California newspapers,
the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle and
The Sacramento Bee. The researchers concluded that two-thirds
of the 3,174 stories they found were episodic "snapshots"
about a violent incident. Just one-third were "thematic, examining
the big picture, providing context, and exploring trends."
Dorfman's organization suggests the media apply the same coverage
standard to all violence, whether extraordinary or routine, and
it urges reporters to expand sourcing beyond the usual-suspect officers
and prosecutors to include health professionals, advocates and independent
experts. The organization says larger newspapers should form a violence
reporting team that spends time speaking with experts and visiting
neighborhoods and less time listening to emergency scanners and
poring over police blotters.
Who Counts?
Why do certain non-celebrity crimes – a child abduction in
an affluent suburb – rate higher on the news agenda than others?
The media frequently are criticized for class bias in crime reporting.
Be cautious of news decisions based on the socioeconomics or race
of the victims or perpetrator, and beware using neighborhood names
as codified modifiers: a Near North Side slaying, a South Side drug
bust, a housing project homicide.
Journalist Russell Baker described a pecking order of "good"
and "little" murders during his years covering crime in
Baltimore. Murders of prominent citizens, children and attractive
women were good. Murders of down-and-outers or those who dabbled
in the vices were little. Baker wrote, "Murders of black people
were not 'little murders.' They weren't murders at all."
Edna Buchanan found the same attitude three decades later in Miami.
She wrote, "Often assistant city editors, short on space and
patience, would insist that I select and report only the 'major
murder' of the day. I knew what they meant, but I fought the premise.
How can you choose? Every murder is major to the victim…A
bright young reporter I talked to recently casually referred to
what he called dirt-bag murders: the cases and the victims not worth
reporting. There is no dirt-bag murder. The story is always there
waiting to be found if you just dig deep enough."
Suspect Descriptions
If the point of using a suspect description is to alert readers
and viewers to be on the lookout, then give full details: "Police
were looking for a 6-foot-2, 225 white man with buzz-cut blond hair,
an equine nose and thin chin hair. He was wearing Green Bay Packers
jacket, blue jeans and white sneakers."
Be cognizant that bare-bones suspect descriptions – a black
man with a medium build – offers little information and can
feed racial biases. (See the chapter on racial issues in crime reporting
for more on this issue.)
Tone and Taste
While details can make a story, the use of certain information (including
photographs and video) can cross the boundary of good taste.
When covering violent events, don't overstate but don't understate.
Consider the effects of your words on victims and the accused, but
note that greeting-card gush does not translate well in news context.
Here are a few considerations:
- Is the questionable material essential?
- Consider the reactions of victims and their loved ones.
- Is the material fair to the accused?
Knocking on Doors
Crime reporters frequently go to scenes of violence and interview
victims or their loved ones.
Many journalists have experienced the catharsis that some survivors
have felt in speaking with a stranger about a traumatic event. Reporters
frequently are able to provide others with a well-rounded portrait
of a victim or a suspect as a result of such interviews.
Yet victim interviews – and the cliché question, "How
does it make you feel" – have become a black eye for
journalists. A few simple tips:
- Be honest and respectful.
- Consider whether the subject understands the ramification
of speaking with you – for example, that the comments might
appear in print or on TV. (This is essential when the subject in
a minor.)
- If you are turned you away, don't badger. Leave a business
card and ask sources to call if they reconsider.
Rights of Victims
Advocates for crime victims have effectively lobbied legislators
and the media over the past 15 years to increase their voice in
the criminal justice process. Journalists should be mindful of victims.
The National Organization for Victims Assistance and the National
Center for the Victims of Crime, both based in Washington, D.C.,
and the Victims and Media Program at the Michigan State University
School of Journalism offer primers on the media and crime victims.
(See the Resources sidebar
for contact information.)
Bucqueroux, of the Michigan program, offered these tips to journalists
in a piece about interviewing victims for "anniversary"
stories after violent episodes:
- Prepare thoroughly.
- Be empathic. Stick to simple statements of condolence, such
as "I am sorry for your loss" or "I am sorry for
what happened to you."
- Listen. She wrote, "Most victims want to tell their
stories. Make sure to give them a chance to tell their stories their
way."
- Be prepared for tears.
- Understand survivor guilt. Bucqueroux wrote, "Particularly
if there are civil or criminal court cases involved, reporters need
to be careful not to mislead readers or viewers by including comments
that leave the impression the victim is actually at fault."
- Touching "can be unwelcome or misinterpreted, particularly
by members of the opposite sex."
- Allow subjects time and space to explain their feelings.
- Consider allowing the source to read or view the story in
advance of publication or airing.
Sexual Assault
While an increasing number of victims of sexual assault have chosen
to step forward in the media, the crime still carries a special
stigma.
Sexual assaults warrant careful consideration in the use of details.
In stranger assaults, be careful not to identify a victim with oblique
details – for example, "a 31-year-old woman who lives
in the 1900 block of South Oak Street."
Family sexual assaults can be confounding since naming the perpetrator
identifies the victims. Even when the name of the accused offender
is withheld, the reporting of the ages of young victims can lead
to identification.
Err on the side of caution.
Note: Another evergreen conflict for crime reporters concerns
the custom of law enforcement to withhold information about serial
sexual assaults. Cops often argue they have a better chance of catching
the offender if he doesn't know they are looking for him. Journalists
respond that publicity might prompt him to stop. Cops counter that
the offender will merely change his pattern or move to another area.
The debate is difficult to resolve.
Rights of Suspects
Be fair to crime suspects, as well. They have rights under our criminal
process. Until a case is concluded by conviction, be cautious not
to fall into the "guilty-of-something" mindset common
in law enforcement.
Crusades, Crime and Context
News stories about crime often are faulted on one of two counts:
- Some pieces about an anecdotal crime fail to provide context.
For example, during the crime decline of the 1990s a New York prosecutor
noted that daily crime stories almost never mentioned the cogent
fact that crime was dropping. Criminologist Roy Edward Lotz calls
this a "know-nothing approach," in which journalists present
each crime as a stand-alone anecdote, with no context to frame its
place in the larger scheme of crime. Most journalists might think
it absurd that a crime brief should include a sentence or two of
framing context, but that it precisely what many criminologists
suggest.
- On the other hand, certain stories tout false or spurious
crime trends.
Many legitimate crime trends have cropped up in the past 15 years,
including drive-by shootings and carjackings, the latter a trend
that began in Detroit in 1993 and spread to many parts of the nation.
A number of legitimate narcotics trends also have been documented,
including crack cocaine, methamphetamines, club drugs and the renewed
popularity of heroin.
Other widely reported crime trends, including school shootings
and child abductions, were based on anecdotal clusters, not real
trends. Thousands of felonies are committed each day in this nation
of 285 million people. It is not difficult to find look-alikes to
a local example.
But can your crime "trend" be quantified with statistical
increases, and are well-informed law enforcement or criminal justice
sources able to delineate the pattern? For more on crime waves,
click here.
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