Reply #9: I think that the media deliberately cultivate fear of crime [View All]

[Lydia Leftcoast]

as a means of social control.

In 1993, I left my college teaching job in a small town in Oregon and moved to Portland. Everyone I talked to who wasn't connected with the college was horrified that I would move to such a "dangerous" place. (Some of them hadn't even been there, even though it was only 40 miles away.)

One month, shortly after I arrived, there were three incidents within a month in which people were killed or injured by gunfire. One of the news stations led with, "Is there a crime wave in Portland?" I called up the station and gave them hell: three unrelated shootings in a month does not constitute a "crime wave."

Whenever I rode the light rail out to the suburbs to go to my doctor (I lived without a car for ten years), I'd hear suburbanites talking about how dangerous Portland was. After one unfortunately incident in which a white youth was robbed and killed by a gang of black youths near Lloyd (shopping) Center, across the river from downtown, I heard a young suburban airhead remark, "Dozens of people have been murdered in the Lloyd Center area. You couldn't pay me to go there." Actually, ONE person had been murdered.

It was December, and a couple of weeks later, the Oregonian ran a feature story on all the murders that had occurred in the metro area during the year. Almost half of them were in the suburbs, and most of the ones in the city were gang-related.

Why would the media promote fear of crime? One reason could be to promote the building of prisons, and I have to say that the tactic has worked.