IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aph/ajpbhl/199888101510-1514_7.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

News media coverage and the epidemiology of homicide

Author

Listed:
  • Sorenson, S.B.
  • Peterson Manz, J.G.
  • Berk, R.A.

Abstract

Objectives. This study assessed how newspaper coverage of homicides corresponds to the epidemiology of homicide. Methods. Stories in the Los Angeles Times about homicide (n = 2782) were compared with the homicides that occurred in Los Angeles County from 1990 through 1994 (n = 9442). The generalized linear model assessed how victim, incident, and suspect characteristics related to coverage. Results. Even when multiple variables were taken into account, some homicides (those with female, child, or elderly victims; those in which the suspect was a stranger to the victim; those in wealthier neighborhoods) received more coverage and others (those with Black or Hispanic victims or victims with less than a high school education; those committed with nonfirearm weapons; those in which the suspect was an intimate of the victim) received less coverage than expected. Conclusions. Some homicides are more newsworthy than others. Potential implications of not providing the public with representative data are discussed.

Suggested Citation

  • Sorenson, S.B. & Peterson Manz, J.G. & Berk, R.A., 1998. "News media coverage and the epidemiology of homicide," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 88(10), pages 1510-1514.
    • Handle: RePEc:aph:ajpbhl:1998:88:10:1510-1514_7
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Gruenewald, Jeff & Pizarro, Jesenia & Chermak, Steven M., 2009. "Race, gender, and the newsworthiness of homicide incidents," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 37(3), pages 262-272, May.
    2. Lawrence, Ruth, 2004. "Understanding fatal assault of children: a typology and explanatory theory," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 26(9), pages 837-852, September.
    3. Chermak, Steven & Chapman, Nicole M., 2007. "Predicting crime story salience: A replication," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 35(4), pages 351-363.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aph:ajpbhl:1998:88:10:1510-1514_7. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Christopher F Baum (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.apha.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.