Media Distorting Reality: Examining Crime Coverage and Its Effects

This essay delves into the ways in which media distorts the reality of crime, shaping public perception and instilling fear. It begins by defining media and its role in disseminating information, then explores how media coverage disproportionately focuses on violent crimes, leading to an exaggerated sense of risk and fear among the public. The discussion examines agenda setting, the influence of social media, and the use of stereotypes in misrepresenting crime. The essay also highlights examples of media bias, such as the coverage of COVID-19 and the #MeToo campaign, and presents counterarguments from those who believe media accurately reflects reality. Ultimately, the essay concludes that media often misrepresents crime, fostering discrimination and fear, and emphasizes the ethical responsibility of media to present information more carefully and avoid promoting hatred or xenophobia. The essay references several scholarly sources to support its arguments.

MEDIA DISTORTING REALITY 1
Media Distorting Reality
(Student’s details: )

MEDIA DISTORTING REALITY 2
The term media has its roots in the word mode/carrier. Media is the mode or the carrier of
information reaching the masses. Even though in its inception days, media was restricted to print
mode; but with the advent of technology, media spreads its wings through radio, television and
internet. Media plays a crucial role in shaping and forming the public opinion (Roy, 2015). This
widespread outreach and role has become controversial. Callanan (2012) highlights the
prominent feature of media in distorting the realities of crime. This, in his view, is done by
disproportionate focus over the random violent cases. This in turn raises the fear of public
regarding criminal victimization. The media essentially instils fear in people (Greer, 2019). This
discussion explores the different manner in which the media actually does distort the reality of a
crime. In doing so, the implications, as have been highlighted by authors like Callanan and
others, would be elucidated.
For many years, different scholars have highlighted that media presents random violence
as a catastrophe, by increasing the significance of such violence on an individual’s life (Chadee,
2015). There is also a heightened assessment of risk, resulting in the public becoming more
fearful. The main reason for this is the reliance of general public on media for getting their
information, instead of their personal sources. And this is natural, considering the outreach of
media in comparison to an individual. Essentially, media cultivates such a view of world that
reflects the recurrent messages of media instead of focusing on the simple reality (Callanan,
2012).
It has also been noticed that media has an obsession when it comes to crime and often
dive into full fictional book mode when covering any crime. As per the estimates of Courtauld
(2014) the crime section alone gets thirty per cent of the coverage in a newspaper. These

MEDIA DISTORTING REALITY 3
statistics have seen a boom with internet news. The crime news stories are selected based on
their newsworthiness and then these are exaggerated and overrepresented that makes a person
believe that are likely to be a victim of such crime. Another noteworthy point in this context is
that the media plays a major role when it comes to agenda setting regarding deviance and crime.
The influence of media on the issues thought about by the individuals is what is referred to as
agenda setting. Given the magnitude of deviance or crime happening in world, the media has to
make the tough choice between what they ignore and what they report. People can only create an
opinion or discuss something that they know about and this is where the agenda setting of media
plays key role. Thus, whatever is decided by the media to put in front of the people is what
influences them. Where media choses to overwhelm the audience regarding a crime that is the
time when the distortion comes into play (Stevens, 2011).
With the modern days of social media, the power of media has grown and the media is
even more easily able to sway the thoughts/ feelings of individuals. The scaremongering tactics
and stereotype promotions are the tools of media in misrepresenting the crime to the general
public (Nightingale, 2017). There have been many cases of stereotyping involved with criminals
and have seen discrimination towards Asian people, and young black men. One of the globally
accredited media houses was a recent example of such bias. CNN had been stated to be
discriminatory and racist when it continued to label COVID-19 as China’s coronavirus and
Wuhan virus. And this is not just CNN being discriminatory, many other journalists from CBS
News, CNBC, MSNBC and PBS News were found to be doing the same (Wulfsohn, 2020).
In the times where the world is already facing the problem of Xenophobia, such
misleading statements push the audience to form views as if the Virus was all China’s fault.
Agreed that this occurred in China but it could have happened at any place across the globe. A

MEDIA DISTORTING REALITY 4
calamity like this cannot be put out as a reason to be discriminatory towards people of Asian
descent. Even though COVID-19 and its coverage is not a crime, but the presentation of it being
associated with Asian individuals have resulted in criminal activities. On March 19th, Yuanyuan
Zhu was spit at and was attacked as a backlash of such discriminatory presentation of the global
pandemic. And this is not a stand-alone incident. The interviews have covered nearly 2 dozen
individuals of Asian descent being fearful in going on due to such labelling. This is similar to
backlash faced by Muslims after 9/11 (Tavernise & Oppel Jr, 2020).
Often the people of such ethnic background are shown to be indulged in criminal
behaviour, thereby attracting anger not just from the public, but also from general public. There
is also the issue of media trial, where one incident leads the media to lose control and blame the
accused (Garcia & Arkerson, 2017). This is even when the charges are not proved. The leading
example of this was seen in the dark side of #MeToo campaign, where every named person was
torn apart by the media. There is no doubt that the overall impact of this campaign has been a
positive one. But, the manner in which every person was put on a media trial was unfair. And
what happened as a result of this? The media bias led to people becoming scared of interacting
with the other gender. It was noted that sixty per cent of the men were afraid of mentoring
women at workplace. They feared for common day activities due to the over blown nature of this
movement (Borysenko, 2020).
Even though there are strong views on media distorting crime, there are others who
believe it is not the case. As per these individuals, media shows what actually happens and does
not mislead any facts. In this digital age, media does bring truth to light (Katz & Mays, 2019).
They put what happens as it is, out there for public to intake. However, these sects forget about
the manner in which the crime is depicted. And that is the issue which creates the problem. Let

MEDIA DISTORTING REALITY 5
us take an example of pornography. It has been established through research that pornographic
films, particularly the ones that cover violent acts, do result in insensitive intercourse or other
such activities, along with a rise in violence against women. This is because of the manner in
which women are portrayed in such films. They are depicted as being submissive or
philandering. This creates a negative image in mind of men that all women are like that, resulting
in women being targeted. Thus, it is all about the manner in which a particular item, be it a
sexual act or a news report, is presented before the audience, which shows if the information is
being wrongly presented or not (Brown, 2020).
The impact of such presentations can easily be seen in daily life of an individual.
Whenever a plane crashes, it is shown in different news channels. However, car crashes are not
often on the news, even when they kill a lot of individuals in comparison. And no points for
guessing, a number of folks have a fear of flying; though, seldom do people have fear of driving.
Another glorious example of this is individuals ranking tornadoes as a more likely reason of
death in comparison to asthma. Fun fact, asthma kills nearly four thousand individuals in a single
year in USA, as compared to tornadoes killing around fifty individuals in a year. Again, this is
because of tornadoes getting more screen time than asthma. The magnitude of crime covered in
news creates fear in mind of individuals despite the falling rates of crime. One of the polls
conducted back in 2016 in USA depicted that seventy seven per cent of individuals believed Iraq
posed a survival/ existential threat for Americans. This was attributed to the media coverage of
militants in Syria (Pinker, 2018).
Media does depict good and all in all one cannot blame media entirely. This is because
people intake bad news more seriously than positive news. News of possible vaccine or cure for
COVID 19 would raise more red flags in comparison to the pandemic becoming worse.

MEDIA DISTORTING REALITY 6
However, it is the power given to media which demands them to behave in a more responsible
manner, particularly when it comes to sharing of information and more importantly, its portrayal.
To bring this discussion to its conclusion, it is evident that media does misrepresent the
crime by blowing it out of proportions. This not only results in discrimination but also puts a fear
in minds of people. Further, the growing reach of media in the internet age has increased the
worries of people because of the manner in which a crime is presented before them. It thus
becomes the ethical responsibility of the media, to continue bringing the facts before the general
public, albeit in a more careful manner. And most importantly, it is their duty to avoid such
representations which cause instances like xenophobia. With powers comes responsibility and it
could not be more true for media. All in all, media is meant to create awareness, not spread
hatred and fear.

MEDIA DISTORTING REALITY 7
References
Borysenko, K. (2020, February 12). The Dark Side Of #MeToo: What Happens When Men Are
Falsely Accused. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/karlynborysenko/2020/02/12/the-
dark-side-of-metoo-what-happens-when-men-are-falsely-accused/#756aa28b864d\
Brown, M. (2020, March 4). The portrayal of violence in the media: impacts and implications
for policy. Australian Institute of Criminology.
https://aic.gov.au/publications/tandi/tandi55
Callanan, V.J. (2012). Media Consumption, Perceptions of Crime Risk and Fear of Crime:
Examining Race/Ethnic Differences. Sociological Perspectives, 55(1), 93-115.
10.1525/sop.2012.55.1.93
Chadee, D. (2015). Psychology of Fear, Crime and the Media: International Perspectives.
Psychology Press.
Courtauld, A. (2014). How the media controls our perceptions of crime. Shout Out UK.
https://www.shoutoutuk.org/2014/11/08/how-the-media-controls-our-perceptions-of-
crime/
Garcia, V. & Arkerson, S.G. (2017). Crime, Media, and Reality: Examining Mixed Messages
About Crime and Justice in Popular Media. Rowman & Littlefield.
Greer, C. (2019). Crime and Media: A Reader. Routledge.
Katz, J.E., & Mays, K.K. (2019). Journalism and Truth in an Age of Social Media. Oxford
University Press.

MEDIA DISTORTING REALITY 8
Nightingale, K.A. (2017). Media Criminology and the Potentially Distorted Social Constructions
of Crime. University of Windsor. https://scholar.uwindsor.ca/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?
article=7007&context=etd
Pinker, S. (2018, February 17). The media exaggerates negative news. This distortion has
consequences. The Guardian.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/feb/17/steven-pinker-media-negative-
news
Roy, J. (2015, February 13). Role of media in our society. Global Ethics Network.
https://www.globalethicsnetwork.org/profiles/blogs/role-of-media-in-our-society
Stevens, D. (2011). Media and Criminal Justice: The CSI Effect. Jones & Bartlett Learning.
Tavernise, S., & Oppel Jr, R.A. (2020, March 23). Spit On, Yelled At, Attacked: Chinese-
Americans Fear for Their Safety. The New York Times.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/23/us/chinese-coronavirus-racist-attacks.html
Wulfsohn, J.A. (2020, March 12). CNN blasted for now declaring 'Wuhan virus' as 'racist' after
weeks of network's 'China's coronavirus' coverage. Fox News.
https://www.foxnews.com/media/cnn-china-wuhan-coronavirus