Crime News Analysis

Have you ever wondered why crime is so popular in the news. Well that is because human beings find crime news interesting and entertaining to learn about. I looked on Fox News U.S. home page and 7 of the 17 linked aticles were related to crime, policing, or criminal justice.

After reading, S. Chermak, "Crime in the News Media," I learned that he studied the difference between crime stories in newspapers and television. He found that 85% of crime related stories were violent in national news.

Six of the 7 articles I found on Fox News were violent crimes. They involved a college campus shooting, a heroic shooting of an intruder, rape and other shootings. I would say that the percentage related to Chermak is pretty accurate.

From this assignment, I have concluded that for crime stories to reach national news coverage they are usually violent. They have to be unusual, or they are bringing it up to help raise awareness of an issue like we learned last unit.

When looking at the sources used in the reporting, the sources were all credible. They included police officers, witnesses, medical examiners, family members, attorney and many more. All of these people have knowledge about the exact issue and are trying to inform the public of what is going on. This is important for the sources to be credible because it helps make you story believable. It helps the reader understand more about what is going.

Chermak found in his study thatnews reporters use quotes or statements to update or add inforamtion to the case. I found this exactly the same in the stories i looked at. All the quotes and statements informed the audience about updates or new information found.