How Does Media Coverage Affect The Media

Crime has always existed all around the world. Crime has always been steady; until the late 1980s we see it declining. Through the NCVS and UCR we can keep track of crime because it provides sources of crime data. Crime is any behavior that can affect others and usually against the law. Crime alters the behavior of people by the way, they act towards others and by the type of crimes they hear that are being committed through the media. Media coverage affects the American people and their perspective on crime negatively: they exaggerate on crime, they create crime myths, and they create a fear of crime to the people. Without a doubt, media coverage helps expand crime by exaggerating and alarming the people on the small amount of crimes. Whenever crime coverage increases the false impression arise: …a media crime wave in 1976 by New York City newspapers, which exclusively covered a few crimes against the elderly. Although these crimes were not in fact increasing, the Media coverage alarmed the public. Often the media’s crime coverage continues to be heavy even though the crime rate may be declining. For example, murder stories on the TV networks’ evening newscasts surged, thanks in part to the O. J. Simpson murder case, by 721 percent from 1993 to 1996…This heavy crime coverage heightened fears that crime was soaring even though the U.S. homicide rate had actually dropped by 20 percent

(Barkan, 2015.P. 24)

Media has the power to change the scenario and by having this ability they can create a myth. Whoever controls the media they can transmit whatever they want into a myth and the people that watch or hear this transmission get brainwashed or get further from the reality. Media confuses the truth in a way that they are telling the truth, but in their way without giving too much information that might affect them in the