Distorted picture
Friday, April 13, 2001
San Jose Mercury News

YOUTH hardly ever show up in our newspapers or on nightly newscasts, but when they do, they are overly linked to violence or crime.

In a stunning rebuke, a new study concludes that the media routinely botch reports on the crime rate, the proportion of violent crime and the proportion of crime committed by youth of color. All of this at a time when violent crime by juveniles has actually dipped.

The skewed lens has ruinous effects: It punctures media credibility and, equally damning, it perpetuates an inaccurate and unfair image of crime in America.

The Berkeley Media Studies project, "Off Balance: Youth, Race and Crime in the News," reviewed crime coverage in news outlets across the nation.

The study, commissioned by Building Blocks for Youth, a national juvenile advocacy group, found:

• A California study showed one out of every two TV news stories concerning children or youth involved violence, but only 2 percent of young people in California were either victims or perpetrators of violence.
• Homicide coverage on network news increased 473 percent from 1990 to 1998, while homicides decreased 32.9 percent during that time. While there was a 68 percent decline in homicides committed by youth from 1993 to 1999, 62 percent of the public still believed that youth crime was on the rise.
• Three-fourths of the media studies on the race of perpetrators found that minorities were depicted substantially in excess of their rates of offending.

Regrettably, if news audiences are swallowing crime coverage at face value, disturbing assumptions will abound.

They are likely to suspect that most crime is extremely violent and that perpetrators are black or Latino and victims, white. If news audiences have little contact with young people, they are likely to think that youth are threats. This is in part because there are so few other representations of youth to the contrary, the study's authors conclude.

Small wonder, then, that the public believes youth crime is out of control and supports lock-'em-up justice policies based largely on media distortion.

In a profession that prides itself on "just the facts," news outlets have been remarkably inclined to report fiction, not to mention reinforce stereotypes.

Crime is a serious problem that demands news attention and political action. But our response is severely crippled -- often fostering bad policies -- when the press abdicates its basic responsibility to tell the truth.

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