Overrepresentation and underrepresentation of African Americans and Latinos as lawbreakers on television news

We conducted a content analysis of a random sample of local television news programming in Los Angeles and Orange counties to assess representations of Blacks, Latinos, and Whites as lawbreakers and law defenders. 'Intergroup' comparisons of perpetrators (Black and Latino vs. White) revealed that Blacks and Latinos are significantly more likely than Whites to be portrayed as lawbreakers on television news. 'Interrole' comparisons (lawbreakers vs. law defenders) revealed that Blacks and Latinos are more likely to be portrayed as lawbreakers than as defenders, whereas Whites are significantly more likely to be portrayed as defenders than as lawbreakers. 'Interreality' comparisons of lawbreakers (television news vs. crime reports from the California Department of Justice) revealed that Blacks are overrepresented as lawbreakers, and Latinos and Whites are underrepresented as lawbreakers on television news compared to their respective crime rates obtained from the California Department of Justice for Los Angeles and Orange counties. Interreality comparisons of law defenders (television news vs. county employment records) revealed that Whites are overrepresented, Latinos are underrepresented, and Blacks are neither over- nor underrepresented as police officers on television news compared to employment reports. We speculate on the psychological effects of exposure to these intergroup, interrole, and interreality differentials on television news viewers.     

The Face of Crime: Viewers' Memory of Race-Related Facial Features of Individuals Pictured in the News

This study examined news readers' memories of race-related facial features of an individual pictured in the news. Participants were presented with a series of news stories, including one of four different versions of the news story of interest: nonstereotyped, stereotyped/noncrime, nonviolent crime, violent crime. Each of the four versions contained a photograph of an individual who was the focus of the story, with the same photograph appearing across news story conditions. Subsequently, participants reconstructed the photograph of the individual by selecting from a series of facial features (i.e., noses, mouths, skin tones) presented on a computer screen. Although selected features did not differ from the actual photograph in the nonstereotyped and stereotyped/noncrime conditions, selected facial features for the crime stories featured more Afrocentric than Eurocentric features, particularly for the story concerning violent crime.     

Race, Risk and Responsibility: Editorial Constraint in the Framing of Inequality

An examination of the presentation of racially comparative risk by 49 leading dailies reveals a tendency to frame stories of difference in terms of Black loss. This framing appears deliberate, and structurally constrained. Indeed, clear examples of the demotion of leads identified by van Dijk are found in cases where headlines fail to reflect leads that emphasize the high probability of White success in the pursuit of mortgages. Structural influences, as represented by the proportion of Black Americans in the newspaper's market, were revealed in correlations suggesting that the greater the presence of Blacks in the market, the more likely the papers were to use a lead emphasizing the high probability of Black failure.     

Caucasian viewers' memory of Black and White criminal suspects in the news

This experiment was conducted to examine Caucasian viewers' identification memory of Black and White criminal suspects featured in a newscast. Viewers watched a news story about a murder that featured a wanted poster of either an African American or a Caucasian suspect. Immediately after viewing and again 3 months later, participants identified a series of photographs, indicating the extent to which they believed each one to be the same suspect pictured in the newscast. Over time, participants who had seen the Caucasian suspect in the news story were increasingly likely mistakenly to identify African Americans. In addition, endorsement of anti-Black attitudes was associated with decreases in misidentification of Caucasian photographs and increases in misidentification of African American photographs.     

Crime News and Racialized Beliefs: Understanding the Relationship Between Local News Viewing and Perceptions of African Americans and Crime

A survey of Los Angeles County adults was undertaken to determine whether exposure to the overrepresentation of Blacks as criminals on local news programs, attention to crime news, and news trust predicted perceptions of Blacks and crime. After controlling for a number of factors including the diversity of respondents' neighborhood and neighborhood crime rate, attention to crime news was positively related to concern about crime. In addition, attention to crime news was positively associated with harsher culpability ratings of a hypothetical race-unidentified suspect and a Black suspect but not a White suspect. Finally, heavier consumption of Blacks' overrepresentation as criminals on local television news was positively related to the perception of Blacks as violent. The theoretical implications of these findings are discussed in light of chronic activation and accessibility of stereotypical constructs.     

Ingroup Favoritism and Outgroup Derogation: Effects of News Valence,Character Race,and Recipient Race on Selective News Reading

This study examined whether the positive or negative valence of a news story, and the race of the character portrayed in the story, would influence Black or White readers' selection of a story. The study employed selective exposure methodology to unobtrusively measure story selections among Black and White readers as they browsed a news site. The results demonstrated Black newsreaders were more likely to select and read positive and negative stories featuring their racial ingroup, and more likely to select and read negative vis‐à‐vis positive stories about their outgroup. In contrast, Whites' story preference was not affected by story valence or character race. Theoretical assumptions from social identity, social comparison, and social cognitive theories are used to explain the findings.     

The Changing Misrepresentation of Race and Crime on Network and Cable News

Prior research found that stereotypical media content shapes the perception of racial groups and social policy. Using the UCLA Communication Studies Digital News Archive, we sampled 146 cable and network news programs aired between 2008 and 2012. Findings revealed that Blacks were actually “invisible” on network news, being underrepresented as both violent perpetrators and victims of crime. However, Whites were accurately represented as criminals. Moreover, Latinos were greatly overrepresented as undocumented immigrants while Muslims were greatly overrepresented as terrorists on network and cable news programs. The implications of these findings are contextualized using the “guard dog” media coverage theory, structural limitations/economic interest of media, ethnic blame discourse, and the community philanthropy perspective.     

Black and White Viewers' Perception and Recall of Occupational Characters on Television

This study examined the differences in how Black and White viewers process messages based on the race of television characters representing 5 occupations. Black and White male viewers were exposed to either 5 Black or 5 White male television characters representing 5 different occupations (i.e., lawyer, doctor, professor, engineer, and business student). Findings from 81 male Black and White college students suggest that Black viewers have better recall of Black occupational characters on television than they do White occupational characters on television. Unexpectedly, the results show evidence that both Black and White viewers' perceptions of occupational characters were positively affected by the race of the Black character. Theoretical and practical implications are also discussed.     

Framing effects of television news coverage of social protest

We investigated framing effects of television news coverage of an anarchist protest. Three treatment stories differed in their level of status quo support. Status quo support had significant effects on viewers, leading them to be more critical of, and less likely to identify with, the protesters; less critical of the police; and less likely to support the protesters' expressive rights. Status quo support also produced lower estimates of the protest's effectiveness, public support, and perceptions of newsworthiness. The results substantiate concerns about status quo support by showing that it can influence audience perceptions.     

Measuring the Extent of Prejudicial Pretrial Publicity in Major American Newspapers: A Content Analysis

This study describes a content analysis of 14 American newspapers over an 8-week period, which measured the extent to which potentially prejudicial statements identified in the American Bar Association (ABA, 1983) Model Rules are reported in news stories about crime and criminal defendants. The sources through which such publicity reaches the press were also examined. Results indicated that over one quarter of the suspects described in crime stories are identified in connection with information specifically targeted by the ABA as problematic. Law enforcement officers and prosecutors were most often the sources of potentially prejudicial information about criminal suspects. Results are discussed in terms of their implications for the effects of prejudicial publicity on juror decision-making and for the effectiveness of judicial remedies.     

Exploring the Limits of Social Cognitive Theory: Why Negatively Reinforced Behaviors on TV May Be Modeled Anyway

Despite extensive discussion of the potential for viewers' social learning of risky health behaviors from TV programming, there has been relatively little effort to test behavioral modeling predictions. That is, it is not clear whether televised depictions of negatively reinforced undesirable behaviors (e.g., unsafe sex), in fact, influence the value viewers attach to those behaviors and their future likelihood of performing them, as social cognitive theory (SCT) would predict. Indeed, we argue that social learning in likely minimal in such contexts due to the programming schemas audiences bring to the viewing experience. In Study 1, the contents of serial TV programming schemas are examined. Results suggest that viewers expect main characters to ultimately survive and thrive, despite the adversity they face. In Study 2, competing predictions from SCT and schema theory are tested. College women ( N = 400) were exposed to various portrayals of promiscuous sexual behavior (1-night stands) that were edited to display more or less positive or negative outcomes. Results suggested that, consistent with SCT, those with direct experience with the behavior were not influenced by the portrayals. However, inconsistent with SCT, but consistent with the schema argument, those without direct experience were more likely to expect future participation in the unsafe behavior, regardless of the valence of the reinforcement depicted. Implications for future research on media, SCT, and risky behaviors are discussed.     

Children's creative imagination in response to radio and television stories

The prevailing explanation for the experimental finding that radio stores elicit more novel responses than do television stories is that viewers have difficulty dissociating themselves form ready-made television images (visualization hypothesis). In this experiment, we investigated a rival hypothesis that radio stories elicit more novel responses than do television stories because they are less well remembered (faulty-memory hypothesis). We presented 64 children at two age levels (grades 1 to 2 and 3 to 4) with one radio story and one television story, and exposed half the children in both age groups to the radio story twice to stimulate their memory. Contrary to the faulty-memory hypothesis, double presentation of a radio story did not result in fewer novel ideas than did a single presentation. In the older age group, radio stories elicited more novel responses than did television stories. We found no medium difference in the younger age group.     

Representation of Women in News and Photos: Comparing Content to Perceptions

This study uses a feminist framework of masculine cultural hegemony to examine the representation of women in two newspapers—a medium-sized newspaper (Study 1) and a larger newspaper (Study 2). Surveys gauged news staff and news reader perceptions of female representation in news content to determine if perceptions matched content-analysis findings. Content-analysis results revealed a greater proportion of males than females in both content and photos for both studies. Female staffers were more likely than their male counterparts to perceive this disparity, and news readers perceived an even greater disparity than the news staff. News staffs were less likely to perceive disparities in the editorial, travel, and entertainment sections. We discuss the findings in relation to cultural hegemony and the representation of women in the news.     

Conceptualizing sources in online news

This study attempts a new conceptualization of communication 'sources' by proposing a typology of sources that would apply not only to traditional media but also to new online media. Ontological rationale for the distinctions in the typology is supplemented by psychological evidence via an experiment that investigated the effects of different types of source attributions upon receivers' perception of online news content. Participants (N=48) in a 4-condition, between-participants experiment read 6 identical news stories each through an online service. Participants were told that the stories were selected by 1 of 4 sources: news editors, the computer terminal on which they were accessing the stories, other audience members (or users) of the online news service, or (using a pseudo-selection task) the individual user (self). After reading each online news story, all participants filled out a paper-and-pencil questionnaire indicating their perceptions of the story they had just read. In confirmation of the distinctions made in the typology, attribution of identical content to 4 different types of online sources was associated with significant variation in news story perception. Theoretical implications of the results as well as the typology are discussed.     

News Accuracy: Some Findings on the Meaning of Errors

More than 300 local news stories from two West Coast dailies were reviewed for accuracy by the persons who had been reported on. Accuracy rates in this study generally replicate those found previously. The closer the acquaintanceship between the newsmaker and anyone on the news staff, the less likely an error will be perceived by the newsmaker. Close acquaintanceship also appears to ameliorate the impact of errors on the newsmaker. So-called subjective and objective errors do not appear to be distinguishable by their seriousness.     

What Do Americans Really Want to Know? Tracking the Behavior of News Readers on the Internet

Evaluations of the health of contemporary political systems typically include some discussion of the modes through which people acquire public affairs information. In response to survey questions, Americans often profess an interest in current events news, but assessments of citizens' political knowledge often find them wanting. Unfortunately, the limitations of previously available research methods have left researchers with an incomplete understanding of news audiences and their exposure patterns. Widespread adoption of the Internet for news reading may change that situation. The World Wide Web provides audiences with substantially more control over the news selection process than they enjoyed with the traditional media. With that enhanced control, it appears online readers are particularly likely to pursue their own interests, and they are less likely to follow the cues of news editors and producers. The present study takes advantage of this attribute of online news presentation to examine the topics people select at Web-based news outlets. In general, online news audiences choose to read public affairs news less frequently than survey research suggests. This result has implications for the long-term health of democratic nations.     

How Verbalizers and Visualizers Process the Newspaper Environment

This article addresses the question of how people process news photographs and news stories as a function of their scores on 2 scales designed to measure 2 "cognitive styles" called visualizing and verbalizing. Although newspaper practitioners believe news photos enhance the newspaper reading process, research has not demonstrated a clearly positive impact. Education theory about visualizing and verbalizing suggests these 2 individual-specific indicators may explain why news photos sometimes help and sometimes hinder. The results show that high visualizing scores did not enhance recall of stories or photos or even enhance story interest. In contrast, high verbalizers found all stories more interesting and recalled both stories and photos better than low verbalizers. The results are discussed in terms of cognitive style theory and its role in how people process visual and verbal news information.     

Modeling Patterns of News Recognition and Recall

This study examines the influence of television news coverage, story attributes, and audience characteristics on public recognition and recall of the news. In the summer of 1989, survey respondents were asked, within 7 days of the dates on which 21 different news stories broke, whether they recognized a particular story, and, if so, what they could remember about it. Results indicate that (a) stories receiving heavier television news coverage are better recognized and recalled; (b) respondents who are generally well informed about public affairs succeed in learning most types of news, regardless of their reported levels of media use; and (c) news stories focused on personalities and domestic news items are better recognized and better recalled than other kinds of standard political news. these findings are discussed in light of research on "personalized bias" in news reporting and its impact on political it formation-holding and public opinion.     

Are News Reports of Suicide Contagious? A Stringent Test in Six U.S. Cities

Past evidence of suicidal contagion from news reports in the United States is based largely on national data prior to 1980 using proxies for suicide stories rather than local news sources. Our research examined more proximal effects of suicide news reporting for 4 months in 1993 in 6 U.S. cities controlling for a wide range of alternative sources of media and interpersonal influence. In addition, predictions for the effect based on suicide contagion theories were examined for 3 age groups (15–25, 25–44, and older than 44). Local television news was associated with increased incidence of deaths by suicide among persons younger than 25 years. Newspaper reports were associated with suicide deaths for both young persons and persons older than 44 years. An unexpected protective effect of television news reports was observed in the 25–44 age range; nevertheless, news reporting was associated with an aggregate increase in suicide deaths. The results support theories of media contagion but also suggest that media depiction can inhibit suicide among some audience members.     

Television News Plugola and the Last Episode of Seinfeld

This article analyzes U.S. television news coverage of the last episode of the NBC program, Seinfeld , focusing specifically on the concept of "plugola," defined as self-interested news stories that promote entertainment events. Using the Lexis/Nexis database, stories devoted to Seinfeld that aired on the Big 3 television broadcast news networks, owned and operated stations in New York City, affiliate stations in a midsize market, and the cable networks CNBC and CNN were examined. The analysis revealed that news organizations with connections to Seinfeld covered the program's last episode more extensively than those without such connections. The article also discusses implications for the role of corporate media in modern democracy.