News Headlines vs Reality

I found an excellent article on Activist Post.com that gives the breakdown of how exaggerated the media is with reporting murder and violence compared to the real numbers of how much violent crimes actually occur.

Activist Post: “Murder, Shootings, Stabbings and Assaults overwhelmingly dominate crime news coverage

The media covers these types of crime 20-30% of the time, despite the fact that murder represents less than 1% of crimes committed. In Oakland, the city best ranked for accuracy, the police reports show murder as .8% of crime, while the media’s crime coverage focused on murders 62% of the time. If you lived in Oakland and read the news during this week, we’d be surprised if you weren’t shaking in your bed after every creak in the night.

In Oakland, residents would have been better served by information discussing burglaries, larcenies and auto thefts—crimes that many people could protect themselves against and that together made up 57% of the crime in that city.

Even in cities where larceny was by far and away the biggest crime threat to the population, news coverage focused heavily on violent crimes like murder.

The majority of crimes documented by the police in Dallas were larcenies, making up 52% of crime that week. News coverage of larceny? Nada. We suspect that crime reporting is heavily influenced by what gets viewers attentions and grabs readers.” Read more…

Even more interesting is this visual breakdown of crimes nationally that gives you an even better perspective.