The Portrayal of Race and Crime on Television Network News

A content analysis of television network news was conducted to assess the portrayal of race and criminal behavior. Findings revealed that Whites were more likely than African Americans to appear as perpetrators, victims, and officers. Both African Americans and Whites were more likely to appear as perpetrators than as victims and officers. African American and White law-breakers were represented in a way consistent with their perpetration rates. However, Whites were overrepresented while African Americans were underrepresented as victims of violent crime. Furthermore, Whites were over represented and African Americans were under-represented as police officers. The implications of these findings are discussed.

[1]  R. Fazio.  How do attitudes guide behavior , 1986 .

[2]  Shanto Iyengar,et al.  Crime in Black and White , 1996 .

[3]  Churchill L. Roberts.  The Presentation of Blacks in Television Network Newscasts , 1975 .

[4]  Shelley E. Taylor,et al.  Social cognition, 2nd ed. , 1991 .

[5]  J. B. Mcconahay,et al.  The scar of race. , 1996 .

[6]  M.,et al.  BLACKS IN THE NEWS : TELEVISION , MODERN RACISM AND CULTURAL CHANGE , 2022 .

[7]  Mary Beth Oliver,et al.  Caucasian viewers' memory of black and white criminal suspects in the news , 1999 .

[8]  Kimberly A. Neuendorf,et al.  TV Entertainment, News, and Racial Perceptions of College Students. , 1992 .

[9]  Jerry A. Caster.  What is “Mainstreaming”? , 1975 .

[10]  R. Davis,et al.  Pretrial Publicity, the Timing of the Trial, and Mock Jurors' Decision Processes , 1986 .

[11]  Shanto Iyengar,et al.  The Superpredator Script , 1998 .

[12]  L. Gross,et al.  The “Mainstreaming” of America: Violence Profile No. 11 , 1980 .

[13]  Dhavan V. Shah,et al.  MEDIA PRIMING EFFECTS: ACCESSIBILITY, ASSOCIATION, AND ACTIVATION , 1998 .

[14]  Charles H. Mullin,et al.  Measuring the Extent of Prejudicial Pretrial Publicity in Major American Newspapers: A Content Analysis , 1995 .

[15]  Felix Gutierrez,et al.  White News: Why Local News Programs Don't Cover People of Color , 2000 .

[16]  Mary Beth Oliver,et al.  Portrayals of crime, race, and aggression in “reality‐based” police shows: A content analysis , 1994 .

[17]  P. Kaniss.  Making local news , 1994 .

[18]  P. Mark,et al.  The intersection of race and crime in television news stories: An experimental study , 1996 .

[19]  Robert M. Entman,et al.  Representation and Reality in the Portrayal of Blacks on Network Television News , 1994 .

[20]  S. Iyengar.  Is anyone responsible? How television frames political issues. , 1991 .

[21]  P. Klite,et al.  Local TV News , 1997 .

[22]  James D. Johnson,et al.  Race, Media, and Violence: Differential Racial Effects of Exposure to Violent News Stories , 1997 .

[23]  D. Hamilton,et al.  Stereotypes and stereotyping: An overview of the cognitive approach. , 1986 .

[24]  Jacob Cohen.  A Coefficient of Agreement for Nominal Scales , 1960 .

[25]  S. Fiske.  Social cognition and social perception. , 1993, Annual review of psychology.

[26]  Martin Gilens,et al.  Why Americans Hate Welfare: Race, Media, and the Politics of Antipoverty Policy , 1999 .

[27]  Nicholas A. Valentino.  Crime News and the Priming of Racial Attitudes during Evaluations of the President , 1999 .

[28]  K. Jamieson,et al.  The Treatment of Persons of Color in Local Television News , 1998 .

[29]  David Domke,et al.  News Media, Racial Perceptions, and Political Cognition , 1999 .

[30]  W. James Potter,et al.  Rethinking validity and reliability in content analysis , 1999 .

[31]  P. Devine.  Stereotypes and prejudice: Their automatic and controlled components. , 1989 .

[32]  Mary Beth Oliver,et al.  Race and Crime in the News: Whites' Identification and Misidentification of Violent and Nonviolent Criminal Suspects , 2002 .

[33]  G. Moran,et al.  A Test of Voir Dire as a Remedy for the Prejudicial Effects of Pretrial Publicity1 , 1992 .

[34]  Robert M. Entman,et al.  Modern racism and the images of blacks in local television news , 1990 .

[35]  John H. Aldrich,et al.  Foreign Affairs and Issue Voting: Do Presidential Candidates “Waltz Before a Blind Audience?” , 1989, American Political Science Review.

[36]  T. K. Srull,et al.  Memory and Cognition in Its Social Context , 1989 .

[37]  James M. Jones,et al.  Racism: A cultural analysis of the problem. , 1986 .

[38]  Jannette L. Dates,et al.  The Black Image in the White Mind: Media and Race in America , 2002 .

[39]  Travis L. Dixon,et al.  Overrepresentation and Underrepresentation of African Americans and Latinos as Lawbreakers on Television News , 2000 .

[40]  E. Higgins,et al.  Handbook of motivation and cognition : foundations of social behavior , 1991 .

[41]  G. Moran,et al.  The Prejudicial Impact of Pretrial Publicity1 , 1991 .

[42]  S. Murphy,et al.  Priming Prejudice How Stereotypes and Counter‐Stereotypes Influence Attribution of Responsibility and Credibility among Ingroups and Outgroups , 1996 .

[43]  H. J. Arnold.  Introduction to the Practice of Statistics , 1990 .

[44]  S B Sorenson,et al.  News media coverage and the epidemiology of homicide. , 1998, American journal of public health.

[45]  Mike Allen,et al.  Television Programming and Sex Stereotyping: A Meta-Analysis , 1996 .

[46]  Patrick T. Vargas,et al.  On The Role Of Encoding Processes In Stereotype Maintenance , 1995 .

[47]  Travis L. Dixon,et al.  Television News, Prejudicial Pretrial Publicity, and the Depiction of Race , 2002 .

[48]  Martin Gilens,et al.  RACE AND POVERTY IN AMERICA PUBLIC MISPERCEPTIONS AND THE AMERICAN NEWS MEDIA , 1996 .

[49]  Travis L. Dixon,et al.  Race and the Misrepresentation of Victimization on Local Television News , 2000, Commun. Res..

[50]  D. Graber.  Crime news and the public , 1980 .

[51]  Judy VanSlyke Turk.  Hispanic Americans in the News in Two Southwestern Cities. , 1989 .

[52]  Haejung Paik,et al.  The Effects of Television Violence on Antisocial Behavior: A Meta-Analysis1 , 1994 .