How do the media in uence their audience? 251would have galvanized public opinion behind stricter gun control laws is an open
question. But if one effect of media coverage is to raise public awareness of an issue,
people are not going to be aware of an issue the media ignore.
Reporting on violent crime in America shows clear framing effects. Over the last few
years, many stories in major publications have reported sharp increases in homicide
rates in cities such as Chicago, St. Louis, and Baltimore, suggesting a nationwide
problem.^32 However, other cities saw homicide rates decline—in fact, the average
murder rate for the top 50 cities has risen only slightly in the last few years and is far
below the peak that it reached in the 1990s (see the What Do the Facts Say? feature).
Adding data on nationwide crime rates to a story on murders in three cities doesn’t
change the facts of what’s happening there, but it does suggest that these events are not
proof of a larger national trend.Obama
announces
Sandy actions
Hook
shootingSenate
bill failsGi ords
tourNavy Yard
shooting1,000
0
2,000
3,000
Dec.
2012Jan. Feb. Mar. Apr. May Oct. Dec.
2013June July Aug. Sept. Nov.FIGURE
7.1Gun Control
Stories per Week,
December 2012
to December 2013Press attention to gun control spikes
upward after a mass shooting, then
fades as reporters move on to other
stories. How does this pattern help
opponents of gun control legislation
preserve the status quo?Source: Danny Hayes, “Why It’s So Hard
to Pass Gun Control Laws (in One Graph),”
Washington Post, August 26, 2015, http://www.
washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage
(accessed 11/21/15).The way a story is reported—which
information is included in an article or
which images are used—makes a big
difference in what people learn from it.
Stories that focus on cases of violent
crime suggest an epidemic of murders,
rapes, and assault, but actual data
on crime rates paint a very different
picture.Full_08_APT_64431_ch07_232-261.indd 251 16/11/18 1:39 PM