arrests, more than 25 percent of the crimes reported on the evening news programs were homicides (Mazer, 2001, n.p.).
The over-representation of violent crimes extends to youth crimes as well. A 2001 California study titled "Off Balance: Media Coverage of Youth Crime" found that 68 percent of local TV news stories about violence involved youth even through youth crimes only constituted 14 percent of violent crime arrests in the state (Mazer, 2001, n.p.). In addition, in 1994, a nonpartisan policy and advocacy group called Children Now published a study on how, during a one month period, five major newspapers and three television networks created and perpetuated the public's fear of children (Doi, 1998, n.p.). During the study, the researchers found that 48 percent of the stories about children on television and 40 percent of the stories in newspapers equated children with crime and violence (Doi, 1998, n.p.). On the other hand, topics such as child poverty, welfare, and child care accounted for only 6 percent of all newspaper and television stories about children.
The week of 2 August 1992 is particularly instructive. That week both Newsweek and Time magazines ran cover stories about youth violence in America. The Time article introduced its story with a meticulous description of a boy firing a gun that becomes "the sound of a growing national tragedy." Newsweek's cover story was titled "Wild in the Streets" and referred to "today's violent teenagers" as "a new and dangerous breed." The Newsweek article cobbled together particularly grisly accounts of murders that had happened across the country as proof of a "epidemic of youth violence" that was "devastating this generation as surely as polio cut down young people 40 years ago" (Mazer, 2001, n.p.).
As a result, media experts contend that this imbalanced and sensationalized reporting desensitizes young people to youth violence while creating an atmosphere of fear amo...