Assessing Cultivation Theory and Public Health Model for Crime Reporting

Abstract

A survey of a Midwestern community supported a public health model of crime reporting and found respondents saying media pay too much attention to crime. Respondents provided modest support for cultivation theory, with no differences found for effects of newspapers and television. Violence is popular in America. It is ubiquitous. It leads to boffo box office. It is a popular topic in political campaigns. It is a cheap and easy way to sell newspapers or bump up ratings. This paper seeks to address sociological effects of violence in media, to discuss how violence is generally covered by news media on a level, to assess feelings of residents of a Midwestern university town regarding news coverage and analyze survey results from both cultivation effects and public health reporting perspectives. Violence in media Violence in media is a longstanding issue. In early research, George Gerbner noted violence in 66 percent of approximately 3,000 American films produced from 1950 to 1961. He also observed, in 1950s, that more than 75 percent of television drama contained acts of violence and it predominated in 56 percent of programs. In 1967 and 1968, he recorded that 80 percent of television programming contained violent portrayals.(1) A three-year study sponsored by National Cable Television Association found that violence continues to be prevalent. Prime time broadcast programs containing violent content increased by 14 percent between 1994 and 1998 and similar content increased by 10 percent on cable stations during same time frame(1). The percentage of prime time broadcast and cable programs with violence ranged from 58 percent in year one to 61 percent in years two and three. Researchers found that a minimum of six violent incidents occur in each hour of typical violent program.(2) But violent content is not limited to entertainment programming. also is a dominant topic of news broadcasts. Paul Klite, Robert Bardwell and Jason Salzman found that crime stories consumed about a third of total time devoted to news. They found that violent crimes are most frequently aired and that though infrequent among crime types, is most commonly covered crime on television newscasts. On 56 stations, more than half crime coverage relates to murder, they wrote.(3) John McManus was interested to learn whether, in making news decisions, television news would be treated as a commodity, following an economic model, or a public service, following a journalistic model. He found that television news, in large part, was simply a regurgitation of newspaper content. This observation provides evidence that newspapers play an influential role in news agenda-setting process not only of their own organizations, but in that of broadcast news outlets as well. McManus found economic model dominated three stations he observed. There was little attention paid to innovation in news gathering.(4) Crime news is a staple of journalism, and reporting it has been considered a public duty of press. Nevertheless, Walter Jaehnig and his colleagues found newspapers emphasize relatively infrequent violent crimes.(5) A 1994 study by Center for Media and Public Affairs showed that news stories regarding crimes more than tripled between 1990 and 1994. Gerbner reported that local TV news crime reports [doubled] in past two years [1995-96].(6) Phyllis Kaniss notes that today's journalists identify strongly with power structures-city and county officers, police and fire departments, housing authorities and so forth. The news that emerges from these sources is often bad news - news of crime, indigence, health problems and so forth.(7) One study showed that newspapers in St. Louis greatly distorted reality of criminal activity. E.T. Jones found that the typical murder had slightly more than 90 times as much attention as average major crime. …