Impacts and consequences of crime coverage

The tropes and industry practices of crime news have profound societal impacts, ranging from distorting public opinion to influencing policy and causing tangible harm to individuals and communities.

Effects on public perception and fear of crime

Media coverage of crime isn’t proportionate to actual crime trends, which “can warp public perception about crime rates, leading people to believe that crime is rampant even when it is on the decline.”[1]

• Fear: Consumption of local crime news is clearly linked to an individual’s own sense of security. Frequent consumption of soft, popular and commercial news—which is sensational and emotional—boosts the fear of terrorism. Furthermore, highly publicized but rare events, such as “random stranger attacks,” are seen as more frightening than their frequency warrants.[2]
• Misalignment with reality: An overwhelming majority of Americans believe crime has increased, even when data shows significant declines. People also tend to specifically overestimate the likelihood of becoming a victim of a violent crime, and people who live in areas with little crime are sometimes “more frightened of it than people who actually live in the relatively few neighborhoods where it is commonplace.”[3]

Effects on policy and accountability

The media’s framing choices influence political debates and legal outcomes.

• Reducing accountability: The language used in coverage of police killings matters: participants in experiments exposed to language that exonerated or minimized the culpability of police violence were “less likely to hold police officers morally responsible and demand penalties.”[4]
• Driving policy: By convincing people that crime is rampant and that safety depends on punishment, the media helps “sow the seeds of an authoritarian mindset,”[5] helping officials convince the public that the solution is law enforcement rather than social services like healthcare, education and housing. A historical example is the media’s complicity in repeating the “youth superpredators” narrative in the 1990s, which was “completely erroneous” but resulted in 48 out of 50 states changing laws to treat teens as adults.[6]

Impacts on victims and communities

The nature of crime reporting often inflicts specific harms on victims and affected communities.

• Dehumanization: By focusing on official metrics, victims are often reduced “to a number or a datapoint.”[7] The constant stream of urban crime coverage “is specifically geared toward telling the pain and tragedy of these communities without any real attempt to provide a greater context.”[8]
• Exacerbating trauma: News coverage has been found to exacerbate recovery for trauma victims. Harm is also done by amplifying “an inaccurate narrative about who is responsible for crime” and reinforcing inaccurate stereotypes, especially concerning communities of colour.[9]
• Copycat crimes: Though research does not show that news coverage of crime makes people more likely to commit crimes, there is evidence that they influence criminals’ style and techniques.[10] For instance, the heavy coverage of writing on the bullets used by the perpetrator of the 2019 Christchurch killings seems to have led numerous other murderers to expect similar attention for messages they leave the same way.

[1] Novak, S. (2024) Why we believe the myth of high crime rates. Scientific American.

[2] Humphreys, A. (2023) Random unprovoked stabbings in Ontario rekindle outsized public fear of stranger attacks. The National Post.

[3] Novak, S. (2024) Why we believe the myth of high crime rates. Scientific American.

[4] Moreno-Medina, J., Ouss, A., Bayer, P., & Ba, B. A. (2025). Officer-involved: The media language of police killings. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 140(2), 1525-1580.

[5] Golding, Y.T.R. (2025) The Media’s Role in Spreading Copaganda. Columbia Journalism Review.

[6] Allen, B. (2023) Newsrooms struggle over how to cover crime. Poynter.

[7] (2024) Better Gun Violence Reporting: A Toolkit for Minimizing Harm. FrameWorks.

[8] Jones, L.A. (2022) Lights. Camera. Crime. The Philadelphia Inquirer.

[9] Allen, B. (2023) Newsrooms struggle over how to cover crime. Poynter.

[10] Rios, V. (2018). Media effects on crime and crime style. Journal of Crime Media Culture, 14(1), 24-36.