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UrbScotty

(23,979 posts)
Thu Aug 28, 2014, 11:31 PM Aug 2014

How News Media Fuels the Myth of Black Crime

You’re not just imagining things. The local news media’s intense focus on violent crime is also deeply racialized, at least if New York City’s media market is indicative of national trends.

Media Matters reviewed the 10 p.m. and 11 p.m. broadcasts of four New York-area stations over the course of this summer and compared their crime stories to arrest data from the New York Police Department. In a report released Aug. 26, the watchdog group found black suspects in crime stories far outweigh their actual representation in arrests—which is saying something, since we also know arrests themselves are racially skewed, with black people representing far more arrests for, say, marijuana possession than drug-use rates suggest is appropriate.

The disparity in crime coverage was most striking for stories about theft. In local news-land, 80 percent of suspects in New York-area thefts are black, Media Matters found. In real life, blacks represent 55 percent of NYPD’s arrests for theft. For assaults, TV-land sees 72 percent of suspects as black. Real life: 49 percent.

This reality skewing coverage is part of how black bodies become synonymous with crime and danger—and helps justify the violence and danger the state then reigns down upon peolpe like Michael Brown and Eric Garner. But the news media’s skewed racial reality doesn’t end with crime.


http://colorlines.com/archives/2014/08/how_news_media_fuels_the_myth_of_black_crime.html



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How News Media Fuels the Myth of Black Crime (Original Post) UrbScotty Aug 2014 OP
And they've been doing it for a very long time. nt Mnemosyne Aug 2014 #1
Excellent read. cyberswede Aug 2014 #2
When you're a Minority in the US, you're Guilty until proven Innocent (and sometimes, not even then) blkmusclmachine Aug 2014 #3
South Carolina skews the criminal reports too. High reporting on black Herself Aug 2014 #4
Thanks! K & R. n/t Judi Lynn Aug 2014 #5

Herself

(185 posts)
4. South Carolina skews the criminal reports too. High reporting on black
Fri Aug 29, 2014, 05:12 PM
Aug 2014

arrests, lower on white, but it isn't accurate representation of the "race" of criminals here.

I'm leaving SC Tuesday, I can't wait to get my Yankee ass back to NY.

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