How Negative are News Media Portrayals of Policing? Evidence from a Content Analysis of Newspaper Stories

• In Event: Exploring the Social Construction of Crime and Justice by the News Media

Abstract

A common view of members of the public and CJ academics and professionals is that the news media are highly critical of policing, and that most stories they publish are highly negative, mostly involving aspects of police violence. The present project investigates those beliefs by conducting a content analysis of news media coverage of policing in newspapers from a wide variety of cities and towns as well as television news coverage. Preliminary findings suggest the news media present a wide variety of viewpoints toward policing that include a combination of positive reports (e.g., police as local heroes), neutral analyses (e.g., discussion of a new policing initiative or crime statistics), and negative stories (police corruption and violence). The paper presents examples of this varying coverage, and concludes with two significant points: 1) negative coverage of policing hues closely to various theorized “news values” and is not uniformly “worse” than coverage of other institutions, 2) neutral and positive stories are common; the reason that negative coverage may “stick” more is that it follows well-established news media “frames” while neutral and positive stories mostly involve “one-offs” that vary considerably in their specifics; and positive coverage is more common when media are more localized.

Author

• Robert A Brooks, Worcester State University