CRIME IN THE NEWS

Abstract

This paper is written to further the arguments of Ditton and Duffy (1983). Their paper is based on the following points: an assumption that the newspaper has a major role in the dissemination of crime news; an empirical demonstration that Strathclyde's newspapers distort the official picture of crime; and a speculation that this may account for recent findings that fear of crime is out of proportion to the amount of known criminal activity. This third point is corroborated by analyses based on the United States National Crime Surveys which indicate that factors other than crime itself influence the levels of fear experienced by a public. The statement which follows examines each of these three assertions and in doing so qualifies the first and last of them. It is argued that interpersonal rumour may be as important as news reporting as a means of disseminating information about crime. It is suggested that factors rooted in the social and physical environment rather than mass media sensationalism may ultimately account for the fear experienced by some urban communities. The discussion is based on a content analysis of the local daily evening newspaper1 (which is further discussed in Smith, forthcoming), and on the results of a household survey conducted in north central Birmingham. The survey design, implementation and results are reported in more detail in Smith (1982a, 1983). Representatives of 531 randomly sampled households were interviewed from a target sample of 690 (62 vacant dwellings, 22 non-contacts and 75 refusals comprise the 23 per cent, non-response). The study area, a racially mixed inner-city neighbourhood, is located just outside Birmingham's redeveloped inner core. It is one of three pockets within the Inner City Partnership Area which, at the time of the study, contained the city's most severe social problems (Birmingham Inner City Partnership, 1979). During the preceding decade, moreover, the neigh bourhood had gained a reputation for high crime rates and poor police-community relations. Survey respondents include 274 (51 per cent.) representatives of coloured ethnic minority groups (this includes 17 per cent, of West Indian origin or descent and 34 per cent, of Asian origin or * Ph.D. Visiting assistant professor, Department of Geography, University of California. 1 The contents of this newspaper were monitored for seven months prior to administering the household survey. For a range of themes, the numbers, lengths, and types of articles were recorded, together with any referenced neighbourhoods. This provided a basis for comparing crime news with both official crime statistics and popular images of deviance. In effecting such comparisons, content analysis is preferable to various other approaches to textual analysis, including analytical semantics, structural analysis and hermeneutic interpretation. Content analysis assumes a relationship between the frequency of a content and its import, and requires the division of a text into meaningful yet quantifiable units. Andren (1981) identifies three strategies that might be employed to achieve this end: pragmatic (classification of statements according to their probable effects); sign-vehicle analysis (a count of particular, objectively definable items); and semantic (classification according to intentional meanings, e.g. the number of times blacks are referred to, irrespective of the actual word used). The last of these strategies was adopted for the present analysis. 289