Les Jones

Media Behaving Badly > A Possible Effect of Crime Reporting on Crime

Pajamas Media - Gang Violence in Black and White

The Los Angeles Times and the local television stations seem to employ a peculiar calculus when deciding to cover a crime story, and in the event they do, how much coverage to give it. Among the factors weighed in this calculus are the number and age of the victims, their perceived culpability (i.e. the sympathy factor), and the crime’s proximity to a white neighborhood.

One 19-year-old gang member shooting and killing another one gets no coverage at all if it happens in South-Central, but plenty if it happens outside a Hollywood nightclub. An innocent child or elderly person unintentionally shot and killed in a drive-by might get a few column inches in the paper and a mention on the television news, as would a shooting that results in, say, three or more deaths, even if the crime occurs in the heart of South-Central and all the victims are themselves gang members. But if an innocent victim is murdered in a white neighborhood, particularly a wealthy one, it’s Stop the presses! at the papers and We’re going there live for breaking news! in the television newsrooms.

[...]

Today, with violence in Los Angeles on the decline, there is a new variable in the calculus of determining a given crime’s newsworthiness: the inter-racial factor. When a black gang member kills another black gang member it will most likely be ignored in the media, just as when both the murderer and the murdered are Latinos. But let a Latino gang member kill a black one, or vice versa, now that’s a story.

[...]

The lesson for L.A.’s gang members: keep the killing within your own neighborhood and your own race, and you’ll keep it out of the news.

Hat tip to Patterico.