When’s the last time you consumed local news about crime, and how did it make you feel?
For me, it was last Thursday, after a colleague shared a Boston Globe story about a horrifying development in a horrifying case. The lede alone, not to mention the damning details meticulously reported by Laura Crimaldi and her Globe colleagues, left me feeling many things, none of them good — most immediately, angry and nauseous.
The latest report about local news from the Pew-Knight Initiative, released last week, details how, and how often, Americans consume and respond to local news about crime. Unsurprisingly, most Americans (77%) report getting news about crime at least sometimes, including a third of Americans who said they consume crime news often.
“In fact,” the Pew-Knight report notes, “more Americans get news and information about crime than any other local topic except the weather.”
Here are some takeaways from the report:
Though the popularity of digital news sources has risen over the last few years, TV news is still a top source of local news nationally. So it’s significant that Americans who said they prefer to consume local news on TV report getting crime news more often than others — and are more likely than any other group to report seeing news about local violent crime daily.
They’re less likely to say they think the amount of crime in their community is exaggerated, and more likely to report satisfaction with the quality of the local crime news they consume.
Americans who consume crime news most often, from any source, are the most likely to say they are concerned about local crime affecting them or their family. Specifically, one-third of Americans who get news about crime often report being extremely or very concerned about this, compared to one-fifth of those who get this news sometimes, and one in 10 of those who never consume local crime news.
Importantly, the report notes, “the survey cannot confirm which is more likely: that news about local crime leads people to become more concerned, or that people who are already concerned about local crime consume more news about it.”
The Pew-Knight survey explored how crime coverage makes Americans feel. About eight in 10 respondents reported that the coverage makes them feel concerned at least sometimes, while seven in 10 reported feeling angry at least sometimes. About half reported feeling motivated to change things by news coverage, and confident that things will improve. And four in 10 said this coverage at least sometimes made them afraid for their safety.
Americans who consume local crime news more often are more likely to have any of these emotional responses.
One-third of Americans report being extremely or very satisfied with the quality of the local crime news they consume. (That’s similar to reported levels of satisfaction with local arts and culture news coverage and a higher level of satisfaction than Americans report with political news.) About half say they’re somewhat satisfied and 18% say they are not satisfied.
Though large majorities of Americans express interest in various types of crime news — such as the broader patterns in local crime or what local officials are doing to address crime — relatively few say it’s easy to stay informed about those topics.
The survey asked Americans where they get their news and information about local crime. Those who consume local crime news through social media like Facebook and Instagram are more likely to think news sources exaggerate local crime while those who get news from local politicians are the most likely to say it’s underplayed.
A similar proportion of Americans report seeing news about three types of crime at least weekly: property crime (37%), drug-related crime (33%), and violent crime (32%) — even though violent crime is much less common than property crime.
Meanwhile, just one in 10 Americans report seeing news about white-collar crime with the same frequency.
Many Americans reported getting information about crime from either people they know or local news sources: 71% and 70%, respectively.
But, when asked which sources they’d turn to first for more information about a crime in their community, the Pew-Knight survey found much more fragmentation. About a quarter say they’d check out local news outlets first, with fairly equal shares saying they’d turn to social media (19%), search engines (19%), or friends, family, and neighbors (17%). Less than one in 10 said they’d look to apps like Nextdoor or to local law enforcement.
Nationally, Republicans are more likely than Democrats to say they view violent crime as a big problem across the country, but Pew-Knight did not find much difference along party lines in how the two groups consume local news about crime or in their levels of concern about crime.
The survey did find, however, that Democrats and Democrat-leaning independents are more likely to see all news sources as exaggerating the amount of crime in their community, and as covering unfairly by race or ethnicity.
Pew has previously found the Black Americans follow local news more closely than other Americans. This is also true of local crime news: “Black Americans see or hear more local crime news — and specifically news about violent crime — than other racial and ethnic groups.” A quarter report seeing news about violent crime daily, while about half see this news at least weekly.
That greater consumption of local news correlates with a greater likelihood to say crime reduction should be a political priority nationally, and to share concerns about violent crime. Black Americans are also more likely to perceive information about crime from local law enforcement, and from local news sources, “as unfair to some depending on their race and ethnicity.”
You can read the full report here.
