All crime reporting is inherently misleading.
I'm betting that if I say "crime", you'll start thinking about names like Lane, Castro, Zimmerman/Martin and the other handful that make the headlines.
But remember: there are 3.5 x 10^8 people in the United States, and 365 days in a year.
That case that made the headlines where a black/white/hispanic gay/straight rich/poor man/woman was rightly/wrongfully convicted/acquitted of murdering/raping/robbing/defrauding someone for some particular reason that you're basing your views on? In the last couple of years, there were vast numbers of other cases fitting the bill for that exact same combination of variables, and every other possible combination too, that never make the news. Why would they? - there's nothing unusual about it.
But because humans like human interested in their stories, instead of providing dry-but important information on crime ("murders up by 0.3%. Drug-related violence falling slightly. Higher proportion of reports of rape resulting in a conviction" or what have you) they provide detailed stories of individual crimes, despite the fact that those crimes are neither representative nor unusual.
To create the impression that a particular type of crime is spiralling out of control and is a massive problem, the media doesn't have to overreport on it, they just have to *underreport less*.
So, by all means, follow those crimes that the press chooses to make newsworthy. But, for the love of god, remember that they tell you *nothing* about the state of crime and the legal system - for that you need statistics, which are much less digestible.