School Shootings and the Man-Bites-Dog Criterion of Newsworthiness

Abstract

School shootings have received considerable media attention in recent years. These widely publicized crimes have provoked fear among parents, school staff, and the public at large despite data indicating that school violence has not significantly increased. This article examines the ways in which school shootings are depicted in the media and contrasts these images with official sources of juvenile crime data. The findings indicate that media reports of school shootings lead to grossly distorted perceptions of the potential for victimization. Recommendations are offered to help provide more accurate and balanced coverage of these tragic events

Mediatization and the Disproportionate Attention to Negative News

“…The public depends on mass media as a source of information for understanding what happens in the world (Edelman 1988). As a result, audiences' knowledge and perceptions of events are commonly based on what is covered in the news (Lawrence and Mueller 2003). This process highlights news media's gatekeeping function, where journalists and editorial boards determine which events make it into the news and which do not (Shoemaker and Reese 1996;Shoemaker and Vos 2009).…”

“…Since news is by definition about the extraordinary and exceptional, media are commonly found to portray infrequent and isolated incidents rather than simply mirror reality (Lawrence and Mueller 2003;Park et al 2009). Consequently, this event-driven media coverage does not accurately reflect the underlying complex realities of day-to-day events and long-term socioeconomic trends (Gibson and Zillmann 1994;Kollmeyer 2004), resulting in a distortion bias (Entman 2007).…”

“…The journalistic tendency to focus on negative news is repeatedly considered an outcome of routine selection procedures of those stories that are believed to garner the highest ratings (e.g. Altheide 1997; Lawrence and Mueller 2003). Second, infrequent and isolated incidents have become part of the daily-news reportage, turning these rare events into the common world image (Altheide 1997;Park et al 2009).…”

“…Farnsworth and Robert Lichter 2006;Semetko and Schoenbach 2003) Indeed, it has been argued that factors such as negativity have grown to become among the most dominant selection criteria of today's media logics (e.g. Lawrence and Mueller 2003;Park et al 2009). Motivated by the significant social consequences of this alleged trend, scholars have attempted to empirically investigate how journalists cover negative incidents and with what consequences.…”

School Shootings in Deutschland

“…Es ist allerdings zu vermuten, dass dieser weniger die Entscheidung für eine Tat an sich beeinflusst als vielmehr die Art und Weise, wie und wann diese ausgeführt wird (Fox & Levin, 2005;Lawrence & Mueller, 2003;Meier & Koschollek, 2008;Moore et al, 2003).…”