Talking Heads: Crime Reporting on Cable News

Abstract

Abstract In this study, we examine the extent to which criminologists and other academics participate in newsmaking criminology as guests on cable news shows. Building on earlier examinations of print media, we explore the ways in which crime is portrayed on popular cable television news programs (airing on CNN, FOX, MSNBC). Specifically, we examine 180 segments devoted to crime on cable news that aired from June to August 2006, with an emphasis on the role of the 347 guests appearing in those segments and their perspectives on crime causation and crime control. We find that criminologists and other academic experts infrequently appear on these programs, and that guests—regardless of type—only rarely address crime causation or crime control when appearing. Keywords: mediacriminal justicepublic policynewsmaking criminology Acknowledgments The authors contributed equally to this article and are listed alphabetically. An earlier version of this article was presented at the November 2008 annual meeting of the American Society of Criminology in St. Louis, Missouri. The authors would like to thank our research assistant, Cynthia Leal, for her contributions to data coding and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions. Notes 1. Launched in 1980 during the Iranian hostage crisis, Fox et al. (Citation2007) note that the round‐the‐clock coverage of the 1991 Gulf War essentially “validated the credibility and utility” of non‐stop news coverage. 2. Although cable television continues to serve local communities through local programming, the bulk of cable television channels have been gobbled up by media conglomerates with about five corporations owning most of the media in the USA, including cable news channels (see Phillips and Frost, Citationin press). 3. The authors debated over whether or not terrorism should be included as a “crime,” particularly in this historic moment when terrorism seems more closely aligned with war or foreign conflict. Ultimately, we were swayed toward inclusion in part by LaFree and Hendrickson's (Citation2007) article in Vol. 6(4) of Criminology & Public Policy which argues for a criminal justice policy response to terrorism. 4. Although we transcribed quotes during the coding phase, we also accessed the published transcripts to verify the wording for lengthy extracted quotations. Because these were spoken words, we have quoted the speakers directly and have retained unusual wording and refrained from calling attention to grammatical errors. 5. The shows were originally recorded on 24 days, but two of the DVDs were not useable. Additionally, two entire episodes of Anderson Cooper 360° had to be excluded due to technical problems in the recording and/or playback. 6. Given the variability in crime coverage across shows, daily and weekly ratings for each of the three shows were obtained to determine if there was any correlation between crime coverage and ratings. Ratings for both Olbermann and Anderson Cooper were extremely variable, while O'Reilly's ratings were quite consistently high (and consistently much higher than either of the other two shows). CNN's Anderson Cooper 360° had the most crime coverage (40%), but never scored ratings anywhere near as high as Fox News' O'Reilly Factor. We, therefore, suspect that ratings across shows are related to factors other than crime coverage. Nonetheless, we tested the hypothesis that ratings might be related to crime coverage, and found a weak and non‐significant positive correlation. Our inability to demonstrate a relationship between ratings and crime coverage should not be interpreted as evidence that there is no such relationship. Our study was designed such that the segment was the unit of analysis. When the unit of analysis is the show, a limited number of data points and a constricted time frame would make it difficult to demonstrate such a relationship even if there was one. 7. Although in our study, the vast majority of crime coverage focused on street crime, sex offenses, and terrorism, the crime topics covered on cable television are likely temporal and fluid, reflecting organizational concerns regarding newsworthiness and ratings potential. More recently, for example, television news coverage has focused heavily on fraud in the wake of the elaborate Ponzi scheme perpetrated by business tycoon Bernie Madoff. In other words, you are likely to see period effects in crime coverage (we thank an anonymous reviewer for drawing our attention to this point).