VICTIMS IN THE NEWS: CRIME AND THE AMERICAN NEWS MEDIA by Steven M. Chermak. Boulder: Westview Press, 1995. 207 pp. Cloth Paper

Reviewed by Jerry L. Yeric, Department of Political Science, University of North Texas.
 

Over the past three decades an extensive body of research has evolved concerning the media’s reporting of crime. What distinguishes Steven Chermak’s VICTIMS IN THE NEWS is his focus on the victim's role in the media’s reporting of crime. The central thesis of the work is that the victims of crime determine what and how the news media report crime in America. The author proceeds by examining this relationship from two perspectives. The first is by examining the role victims perform in the production of crime news stories, and the second is by examining the media’s presentation of the characteristics of the victims in their reporting. To accomplish these objectives the author selects three methodologies commonly employed in the media literature--content analysis, ethnography, and interviews. This multiple approach provides the possibility of a unique and informative study. Far too many studies fail to incorporate a multiple method approach and thereby miss the subtleties that frequently underlie their explanations. Chermak is to be commended for his broad and comprehensive approach to the analysis of media reporting of crime.

The author has collected an impressive database from six newspapers and three electronic media. After first matching cities according to population size and the number of criminal offenses for 1990, the author stratifies the cities into three categories: medium, large, and extra large. Data were then collected from all six cities from the fifth day of the first six months of 1990. This produced 2,158 print stories and 506 television stories or a total of 2,664 stories for content analysis.

The ethnographic observations of crime news production were conducted in one newspaper and one television station in a large metropolitan city. Finally, the interview data was drawn from forty in-depth interviews conducted in the two Midwestern cities. From this rich database the author provides the reader with a detailed description of the victims role in crime stories. The analysis of the data is presented primarily in the form of percentages and raw numbers.

From the data the author develops a typology of crime stories based on the amount of time and space the story is afforded in the media. This represents a continuum from short stories that appear daily, which Chermak calls tertiary stories, to those involving sensational crimes and personalities that are national and international in their newsworthiness, which the author calls super prime stories. Examples of the later category were the Mike Tyson and William Kennedy Smith rape trials and Marion Berry’s drug trial. Between these two extremes are secondary and prime stories. Secondary stories are those that "have the potential to become important news" (33), for the reporters have spent more time and gone into greater detail in their investigation of these stories. The prime crime stories receive the prime location in the news, and are recognized by the extensive and detailed attention they receive from the media.

Chermak begins by first examining the factors that have brought greater attention to the media’s coverage of victims. These factors include increased public awareness of crime and violence in society, the growth of victim’s rights interest groups such as MADD, Parents of Murdered Children, and National Organization for Victims of Crime, the legislative response to crime at various levels of government, the reemergence of research on the victims of crime, and, finally, the increased media attention to victims for crime.

Chapter two is one of the book’s most significant contributions. Here the author examines the construction of news. What his data show is that over half the stories on crime are constructed from the police and court records which explain why crime stories focus predominately the initial stages of crime discovery and arrest. It is also the reason why most media stories involving crime are reported as tertiary and secondary stories.

Chapter three examines the images of crime, victims, and defendants. The study confirms earlier research that crime reporting is primarily concerned with incidents of murder, violence and drugs. These stories are both easily reported, sensational, and serve as an enticement to their audiences. These three ingredients meet the standard of newsworthiness set by the media. The focus on the unique and sensational is seen in one reporter’s perception of his job: "If it isn’t a homicide then I’m not interested" (55) or "Do you have any bodies for me" (55).

Chapter four explores how the crime victims affect the media. By comparing the reporting of the incident, victim and defendant, the author finds that the media rely on the police for victim information in nearly one half of the tertiary stories, while in primary stories police are used only one quarter of the time. In addition, victims themselves and their acquaintances are the second more important source of information, behind the police in prime stories. Prime stories are also those stories that have elements of sensationalism. "Reporters are more likely to consider crimes when the impact noted in the injury column is death, severe trauma, or odd and heinous (e.g., a rape victim doused with drain clearer) .… (87).

Chapter five has a nice comparison of how print and television cover crime and the victims. For television, crime is the second most important story behind sports. Its reliance on video and lack of beat reporters produce stories that are short, visual, and dramatic. As one small market television manager is quoted as saying, "My first role is to get the young, affluent people watching the news. My second role is to uphold journalist standards" (111). Newspapers, on the other hand, provide greater detail and are more likely to focus on white-collar crimes and on victims than television.

Citing the lack of comparison among cities in previous studies, the author turns his attention in chapter six to just such a comparison. He finds that size is not a factor in crime reporting, or in how crime is reported. The one caveat is that larger cities are more likely to report on the victim than smaller cities. This is attributed to increased staff size. The book concludes with a chapter on the News Media in Society. This is a summary of how the media have been portrayed in literature that adds very little to the study.

The strengths of this work are its focus on the victim in the media’s coverage of crime, the collection of a large data set, and the insights uncovered in the interviews with media personnel. The latter is perhaps the most useful in helping the reader understand why the media make the decisions they do in the coverage of victims of crime.

While many important studies of the media and of the criminal justice system are cited throughout the work, the book’s most serious flaw is the absence of a theoretical foundation. This causes the author to rely solely on descriptive analysis, and hence, to lose much of the richness of his data set. One would have liked to have seen a more rigorous, multivariate analysis of the data. A percentage can be a powerful statistic, but these data would have benefited from a more rigorous analysis. Such an effort would have enriched the ethnographic and interview material greatly and integrated the disparate methodologies. The information obtained using the latter methodologies furnishes some of the more interesting insights into the media’s handling of crime victims. Efforts to answer questions about the motives behind the selection of stories and how the bias of those covering crime are exposed are enhanced by these treatments.

The book addresses an academic audience. Its organization is clear and straightforward but the writing at times is laborious and redundant. However, the book is a contribution to the literature on the media and crime, and will be useful to those who have a special interest in the media or the criminal justice system.

The victims do determine what and how the media report about a crime. But it is the nature of the crime, the ease of obtaining information about it, its sensationalism, and its potential to attract large audiences that draw attention to the victims of a crime, not its social impact or implications. Crime is a commodity, it is used to sell a product and to enhance revenue for the media. Only in the rarest of instances are victims portrayed as victims. Crime serves as a tool for the reporters of America’s corporate media, and society is left with little information concerning the causes, long term effects or the implications of crime on its victims.