Race and the Problem of Crime in Time and Newsweek Cover Stories, 1946 to 1995

Abstract

Recently in the United States overwhelming public support for the dismantling of Great Society programs illustrates that, in the last 30 years, a fundamental change has occurred in public discourse concerning the causes and potential solutions for urban social problems. The rhetoric of welfare reform, the attack on affirmative action, and the growth of right-wing antigovernment militias are but a few of the signs that the American public(1) has little empathy for the urban poor, and in particular for urban racial minorities, with respect to the failure to realize the American Dream. This article will argue that an important aspect of contemporary mainstream contempt for the problems of urban racial minorities is to be found within the social construction of the problem of crime in the post-Civil Rights era. The discussion will focus in particular on the ways in which news media representations of the problem of crime and of the violence associated with African American political straggle have contributed to current ideological notions regarding young black males as criminals.(2) Previous Research Research on crime and justice in the news media consistently demonstrates that the media help to construct, rather than simply represent, the interconnected social realities of crime and justice. However, nuances in the processes through which this takes place, and the social and political significance of media representation of crime and justice, are matters of considerable theoretical controversy.(3) Two overlapping areas of research are relevant to the current project: (1) research exploring the ideological or political nature of crime news, and (2) research examining news-media images of race and crime. The Ideological Nature of Crime News Research on the ways in which crime and justice news tend to support particular ideologies or political agendas over others has emerged primarily in the last two decades (see, for example, Chibnall, 1975; Fishman, 1978; Hall et al., 1978; Humphries, 1981; Hickman, 1982; Christensen, Schmidt, and Henderson, 1982; Cavender, 1984; Voumvakis and Ericson, 1984; Gorelick, 1989; Ericson, Baranek, and Chan, 1987, 1989, 1991; Humphries and Caringella-MacDonald, 1990; Barlow, Barlow, and Stojkovic, 1994; Schlesinger and Tumber, 1994; and Barlow, Barlow, and Chiricos, 1995a, 1995b). Much of this work adopts a topdown approach to questions of media representation of and its role in crime and justice concerns. That is, studies either document the inclusion of dominant class, race, or gender ideologies in news accounts or describe the institutional processes and relations that result in the tendency for crime and justice news to support dominant ideologies. More recently, studies have begun to explore the contradiction and complexity involved in media-crime-justice relations. In particular, Ericson et al. (1989) and Schlesinger and Tumber (1994) are notable for having moved beyond the more traditional approach of looking at these relations from the perspectives of journalists, to exploring them from the perspectives of institutions and organizations that are, or have the potential to become, sources for crime and justice news. Chermack (1995) examines the role of victims in the generation of crime stories and the representation of crime victims in the news. Along other lines, Humphries and Caringella-MacDonald's (1990) examination of audience interpretations of news accounts of violence against women extends the crime news research into the critical area of how audiences make meaning of the world offered to them by the media (Morley, 1992). Race and Crime in the News Media The research addressing representations of race and crime within crime news has produced mixed findings. Roshier (1981) and Graber (1980) each reported the overrepresentation of older, white, higher-status offenders in news accounts as compared with arrest statistics. Other studies have reported finding larger proportions of younger and/or lower-status offenders within crime news (Cumberbatch and Beardsworth, 1976; Dussuyer, 1979; Gans, 1979). …