Crime, Media, Culture

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Fear of crime and the media: Assessing the lack of relationship

Derek Chadee and Jason Ditton
Crime Media Culture 2005 1: 322
DOI: 10.1177/1741659005057644

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RESEARCH NOTE

Fear of crime and the media: Assessing the lack

of relationship
DEREK CHADEE, University of the West Indies, Trinidad
JASON DITTON, University of Sheffield, UK

Abstract
A review of available international evidence indicates that crime features regularly in the
media. New data shows that this is also true for Trinidad. Elsewhere, it has been shown
that newspaper crime news concentrates heavily on infrequently occurring crimes involv-
ing sex and/or violence. Crime news on television and radio has not been subject to as
much scrutiny, although it has been shown that televised crime drama is noticeably
violent. Data from a representative sample of Trinidadian respondents (n = 705) under-
taken in 2000 indicate no relationship between media consumption and fear of crime.

Key words
media; fear of crime; survey data; Trinidad

CRIME IN THE MEDIA: FEAR IN THE POPULATION

With characteristic elegance, Vincent Sacco (1982) describes what is both probably a
typical lay, and common professional criminological attitude to the relationship between
the media and crime:

The argument that mass media exert direct causal effects upon perceptions of crime
possesses a certain intuitive appeal. In general, this position seems to follow logically
from the three widely accepted assumptions upon which it is based. First, since most
people do not have direct personal experience with serious crime, the major source of
public thought and feeling regarding crime must be vicarious in nature. Second, the
mass media of communication are information sources to which the members of
modern society widely attend. Finally, as a number of researchers have documented,
contemporary North American media contain a substantial proportion of crime-related
news and information content. (p. 476)

CRIME MEDIA CULTURE 2005 SAGE Publications, London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi,
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 CHADEE & DITTON FEAR OF CRIME AND THE MEDIA 323

His first and second points are held to be true for the purposes of this article. His final
point can certainly be extended to Trinidad, the source of the empirical data relating both
to respondents media consumption and to their fear of crime discussed later.
A number of studies have indicated that crime constitutes a relatively small but variable
percentage of newspaper news. Two reviews are available. The first is by Dominick (1978)
who concludes that a typical metropolitan newspaper probably devotes around 510 per
cent of its available space to crime news (p. 108). A later review of around 36 studies
suggests that between 1.6 per cent and 33.5 per cent of newspaper coverage relates to
crime news (Marsh, 1991: 73).
Inevitably, different researchers have used different methods, and the bewildering
variety of sampling approaches, sample sizes, measurement techniques and definitions of
what constitutes crime prohibits any definitive quantification of the amount of crime news
in newspapers. Indeed, Reiner (1997) concludes that:

given that different studies work with vastly different concepts of crime, and have
ranged over many different newspapers and places, it is not possible to conclude from
a literature review whether there is a trend for a greater proportion of news to be
about crime. Although later studies tend to find higher proportions of crime stories
than earlier ones, they have also tended to adopt the broadest concepts of crime, so
this may well be a result of the measurement procedures used rather than a reflection
of change in the media . . . In conclusion, estimates of the extent of news devoted to
crime are highly sensitive to the varying definitions adopted by different researchers.
(p. 198)

One other consistent weakness is, as Heath (1984) has claimed, that:

most of the previous research on the effects of newspaper crime coverage on percep-
tions of crime has shared the same conceptual bias it is based on global rather than
component analysis of crime reports. That is, researchers have treated crime news as
a largely unidimensional entity, ignoring differences in degree of detail, style of presen-
tation, and relevance of the crime for the average reader. (p. 263)

Some analysts have attempted comparisons across time, but the results are inconsistent.
Roshier (1973: 33), for example, suggests that crime news in the Daily Mirror (the UK
tabloid) amounted to 5.6 per cent, 7.0 per cent and 5.6 per cent in 1938, 1955 and 1967
respectively. Yet, Reiner et al. (2000: 112), also considering the Daily Mirror, suggest that
crime as a proportion of home stories amounted to 9 per cent in the period 194551,
but as much as 21 per cent in 198591.
Crime news on television has not been subjected to the same degree of scrutiny as
crime news in newspapers, nor, understandably, for so long. Dominick (1978: 111) cites
one 1969 study of American television news which found that NBC devoted 13 per
cent of news time to crime, and CBS 18 per cent, and the Glasgow University Media
Group (1976: 95) found that crime news only amounted to 5 per cent of television
news in the UK during the first six months of 1975. More attention is paid to crime
drama on television, with Surette (1998: 367) suggesting that the proportion of
programming dealing with law and order issues on the three American networks was

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324 CRIME MEDIA CULTURE 1(3)

low in the early 1950s (4 per cent in 1953) rising to an average of about 32 per cent
in the 1970s, peaking at just over 37 per cent in 1987, and thereafter declining to nearly
20 per cent in 1996.
Radio news content has not been the subject of analysis, although it has played a part
in some fear-of-crime studies (Gomme 1986; Gebotys et al., 1988 and Chiricos et al.,
1997). Radio crime drama has not been measured recently, although Dominick (1978:
113) suggests that it amounted to 4 per cent of evening programme time in 1932, 5 per
cent in 1940, 14 per cent in 1948, and 5 per cent in 1956.
That crime news which appears in newspapers is inevitably a selection, with Ditton and
Duffy (1983) indicating that only 0.25 per cent of possible crime events (crimes made
known to the police or heard in the courts in the region of Scotland covered by the news-
papers they studied) appearing in newsprint. In addition, this selection is distorted, with
crimes involving violence being reported with 22 times the frequency justified by officially
recorded occurrence, and crimes involving sex being reported with 14 times the frequency
justified by officially recorded occurrence. In a similar vein, Humphries (1981) analysed a
5 per cent sample of the New York Post for 1951 and 1968, and discovered an increas-
ing overemphasis on violence, particularly homicide (23 per cent of crime stories in 1951,
and 66 per cent of crime stories in 1968). Much the same was discovered by Sheley and
Ashkins (1981) who examined one newspaper and three television channels in New
Orleans for three months in 1978, and discovered substantial distortion, and, in particu-
lar, massive over-representation of homicide. Similarly, Smith (1984), researching in
England, found that personal offences amounted to less than 6 per cent of reported
crime, but 52.7 per cent of newspaper space devoted to crime. Finally, Liska and
Baccaglini (1990) analysed 25 editions of each of the leading newspapers in 26 American
cities (newspaper sample selected randomly from the previous year) and conclude that
homicide accounted for 0.02 per cent of recorded crime, but 29.9 per cent of crime
stories. However, it is not clear that people estimate real crime rates from newspaper
crime-reporting ones (Davis, 1952), or, indeed, that they even read crime news to learn
about crime (Katz, 1987).
Further, it has been noted frequently that television crime drama is noticeably violent,
with Dominick (1978) claiming that across all programs, homicide was 22 times as
common as in real life (p. 115). It is unclear how this was measured, but Dominick cites
a US Congress committee report which counted violent events on television in Los
Angeles in 1960, and found that 144 murders, 52 justifiable killings, 13 kidnappings, 11
planned but unsuccessful murders and 4 lynchings occurred on television during one
weeks programming, and all before 9 pm. The situation does not appear to have changed
since then.
In brief, then, most people do not have any direct experience of crime, but they read
about it in newspapers, hear about it on the radio, and see it on television. Crime drama
is typically violent, but even when apparently factually reporting events, crime news
tends to be selective and distorted with a general overemphasis on crimes involving sex
and violence.
Positing a causal relationship between the media portrayal of crime and fear of crime
has, understandably, become a staple in fear of crime research. The nature, if any, of such

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 CHADEE & DITTON FEAR OF CRIME AND THE MEDIA 325

linkage has been subject to a recent review (Ditton et al., 2004: 598) which updates work
previously conducted by Eschholz (1997), and concludes that:

Of 14 studies of the effects of newspaper consumption on fear of crime, and 25 studies

of the effects of television consumption on fear of crime, a total of 73 attempts to
discover a general relationship have been made. Of these, 30 (41 per cent) discovered
a positive relationship, and 43 (59 per cent) did not. If simple broad rank order effects
and those with significance levels of only p < 0.05 are discounted, then only 20 (27
per cent) discovered a positive relationship, and 53 (73 per cent) did not. (p. 598)

Though fear of crime is considered to be a well-researched area in criminology (Farrall et

al., 2000), it is an under-researched area in the Caribbean.

METHOD
This study adopts Ferraros (1995) definition of fear of crime. This definition is: Fear of
crime is an emotional response of dread or anxiety to crime or symbols that a person
associates with crime (p. 24).
The survey was conducted in Trinidad in September 2000. Trinidad is the southern most
island in the Caribbean, and had an average number of serious crimes for the ten-year
period 19909 of 14 per 1000 population. Trinidad has three daily newspapers and three
local television stations. Prior to this study there had been no studies conducted in Trinidad
on the relationship between fear of crime and the media. Using a list of enumeration
districts from the Central Statistical Office, 62 enumeration districts were randomly
selected from low- and high-crime areas with 12 households subsequently and randomly
selected from each district. Given the dispersion of the population this method allowed
for randomness in a disperse population. The sample size was 705 and data collection
involved face-to-face interviews with the head of the household (where possible) or the
next most responsible adult. Contacts were limited to one call-back. In cases where
the respondent was not available the adjacent house was then selected for interview. The
sample consisted of 42 per cent males and 58 per cent females.

Dependent variable fear of crime

Adopting the scale used by Ferraro (1995), respondents were asked the following
question with these fixed choice responses (and in this order): very afraid = 4; afraid =
3; unafraid = 2; and very unafraid = 1. How much are you afraid of each of the follow-
ing ten things?:

Being cheated, conned, or swindled out of your money;

Having someone break into your home while you are away;
Having someone break into your home while you are there;
Being raped or sexually assaulted;

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326 CRIME MEDIA CULTURE 1(3)

Being murdered;
Being attacked by someone with a weapon;
Having your car stolen;
Being robbed or mugged on the street;
Having your property damaged by vandals;
Being kidnapped.

The measure for fear of having your car stolen was dropped because it depressed the
Cronbach Alpha score (probably because about 48 per cent of respondents indicated that
they did not have a car). Fear of being kidnapped was introduced as an item in the scale,
as kidnapping is noticeably more common in Trinidad than, for example, in the USA or
UK. In a 1999 nationwide survey in Trinidad (Deosaran, 1999) findings showed that 45
per cent of respondents were fearful of being kidnapped. In this study, 62 per cent of
respondents indicated that they were fearful of being kidnapped. Similar findings were
obtained in earlier fear of crime research in Trinidad (Chadee and Ditton, 1999).
Responses to these ten were combined to form a FEAR of crime scale ranging from
936 with a Cronbach Alpha of 0.89.

Independent variables
The independent variables were RADIO, NEWSPAPERS, TV HOURS and TV NEWS, and
were created in the following way. Frequency of listening to the RADIO was measured on
a four-point scale (in this order): very often = 4; often = 3; infrequent = 2; and dont
listen = 1. Frequency of reading NEWSPAPERS was measured by adding the number of
days for the week respondents read the three daily newspapers. The range of this variable
was 021. TV HOURS was measured by multiplying the reported weekday average by five
and the weekend day average by two. The results of the two multiplications were
summed to give a continuous variable. Finally TV NEWS was measured by the number of
days that prime-time television news was watched, and thus ranged from 1 to 7.

Crime in the media

A content analysis of Trinidads three daily newspapers was undertaken for the period
May to August 2000 that being the four months prior to survey. Crimes reported were
counted, and were also subdivided into violent and non-violent crimes. A summary is
reported in Table 1, where the percentage of those crimes involving violence that were
reported to the Trinidadian police during the same period is included for comparative
purposes. The picture painted by the newspapers is of more violence than that reflected
in police statistics. The average of violent crimes as a proportion of total crimes for the
three newspapers was 56 per cent. However, from police data for the same period, violent
crimes were only 30 per cent of the total crimes reported.

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 TABLE 1 Percentage of violent crimes by total crimes reported in daily newspapers and reported to the police MayAugust 2000

Daily newspapers Police data

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Express Trinidad Guardian Newsday Total for all

newspapers

Month Total Violent Violent Total Violent Violent Total Violent Violent Total Violent Violent Total Violent Violent
crime crime crime crime crime crime crime crime crime crime crime crime crime crime crime
as % as % as % as % as %
of total of total of total of total of total
crime crime crime crime crime

CHADEE & DITTON

May 185 121 65% 287 181 63% 387 249 64% 859 551 64% 1496 444 30%
June 75 41 55% 216 116 54% 261 162 62% 552 319 58% 1522 488 32%
July 318 186 58% 474 199 42% 252 140 56% 1044 525 50% 1484 445 30%
August 222 123 55% 281 136 48% 257 157 61% 760 416 55% 1548 453 29%
Total 800 471 1258 632 1157 708 3215 1811 6050 1830

FEAR OF CRIME AND THE MEDIA

Average 200 118 59% 315 158 50% 289 177 61% 804 453 56% 1513 458 30%
per
month

327
 328
CRIME MEDIA CULTURE 1(3)
TABLE 2 Descriptives of media consumption
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Radio listening Percent and mean number of days Mean number of TV hours and
newspaper read per week TV news days viewed per week

Frequency of Percentage Number of Express Trinidad Newsday TV news days TV hours

radio listening days Guardian

Very often 44% 0 35% 67% 32% Mean = 5.47 days Mean = 23.06 hrs
Often 28% 1 12% 9% 5% S.D.* = 2.25 days S.D.* = 18.64 hrs
Infrequently 20% 2 13% 8% 9%
Dont listen 7% 3 10% 6% 13%
4 6% 1% 7%
5 4% 2% 6%
6 3% 1% 3%
7 17% 7% 26%
Mean (Days) 2.51 1.11 3.17
S.D.* (Days) 2.60 2.03 2.80

*S.D.: Standard Deviation

 CHADEE & DITTON FEAR OF CRIME AND THE MEDIA 329

RESULTS
Table 2 gives summary information on media consumption variables. Forty-four per cent
listened very often to the radio; 28 per cent often; 20 per cent infrequently; with 7
per cent not listening. The mean number of days of newspaper readership for the
Express was 2.51, for the Trinidad Guardian, 1.1 and for Newsday, 3.17. The mean
number of TV NEWS days was 5.47 days while the mean number of TV HOURS viewed
was 23.06 hours for the week.
Regression analysis with age, ethnicity, sex, and crime residence together with RADIO,
NEWSPAPER, TV HOURS and TV NEWS shows that the demographic factors influence fear
of crime. However, the media variables have no impact on fear.
There is only a weak correlation (r = 0.084, p < 0.01) between TV NEWS and FEAR for
the entire sample. Controlling for ethnicity, there was a weak correlation between FEAR
and NEWSPAPERS for Indo-Trinidadians (r = 0.126, p < 0.01). Controlling for those in
homes with burglar proofing, there was a low correlation between TV NEWS and FEAR
for those who had no burglar proofing (r = 0.165, p < 0.01). There were no other signifi-
cant relationships.

DISCUSSION
The results clearly indicate that there is no relationship between fear of crime and the
media in Trinidad, insofar as the media is adequately operationalized as reading news-
papers, watching prime-time television news, and listening to the radio. Demographic
factors (AGE, SEX, CRIME RESIDENCE and ETHNICITY) are better than media variables in
explaining variance in the dependent variable. This point is clearly articulated in the regres-
sion results reported in Table 3 (see also Chadee and Ditton, 1999, 2003). Except for

TABLE 3 Regression of fear of crime

Variable B(t-ratio)

TV NEWS .164 (1.478)

TV HOURS 5.933 .438
NEWSPAPER 2.472 .507
RADIO 3.502 .14
AGE .395 2.66**
SEX 3.811 7.94****
ETHNICITY 1.99 4.07****
CRIME RESIDENCE 2.35 4.73****
N 705
R2 .178

Note: Unstandardized regression coefficients with t ratio.

* = p <0.05; ** = p < 0.01; *** = p < 0.001; **** = p < 0.0001.

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330 CRIME MEDIA CULTURE 1(3)

prime-time local news and a few other locally produced programmes in Trinidad,
American television productions constitute the bulk of broadcast television there. Distance
from the source of production may partly explain the low relationship between crime fear
and television viewing.
It may also or additionally be the case that the methods of measuring media consump-
tion adopted in this study, although conventional, are insufficiently sensitive. Is mere
measurement of exposure to news media adequate? Do social psychological constructs
intervene between news media and the fear of crime? Although some authors (OKeefe,
1984; Chiricos and Eschholz, 2002; Banks, 2005) have investigated this issue, this study
makes the case for social psychological sensitivity in measuring instruments designed to
study the relationship between fear and the media. Future studies should perhaps collect
data on such social psychological dimensions such as attitude to the media, perceptions
of the reliability of media reporting, frequency in accepting reports from the media, and
kind of news that are more likely to be remembered, as these may critically affect viewer
and listener receptibility. The findings reported here, showing the lack of relationship,
create an important cross-cultural dimension for fear-media researchers since most other
studies in this area are from either United Kingdom or United States.
At another level, the puzzling failure of most researchers to trace a significant effect
of media consumption on fear may well be due to a typical research strategy of asking
about the degree of fear, and about the frequency of media consumption. Farrall and
Gadd (2004), in a quite revolutionary article, have, for the first time that we are aware,
asked respondents how frequently respondents felt fearful of crime rather than just how
fearful they felt. Accordingly, future attempts to correlate media consumption with crime
fear might usefully consider the degree of media consumption as well as the sheer
frequency of it. Such an approach might well yield the level of relationship between media
and fear that so many believe to lurk beyond the grasp of current analytic techniques.

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332 CRIME MEDIA CULTURE 1(3)

DEREK CHADEE is Director of the ANSA McAL Psychological Research Centre and
Senior Lecturer in the Department of Behavioural Sciences, University of the West
Indies, Trinidad. Email: dchadee@fss.uwi.tt.

JASON DITTON is Professor of Criminology, Department of Law, Sheffield University,

UK. Email: jasonditton@lineone.net.

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