Turn on a local news broadcast, and chances are you’ll see a string of stories about murder, rape, armed robbery, and child molestation.(*) Sometimes, entire news segments are devoted to nothing but violent crime.(*) These days, local stations have even begun importing gruesome stories of murder and mayhem from around the country; and we all know how the cable news networks love to obsess on the latest sensational murder mystery.
With all this coverage of violent crime, one would think that the problem was worsening each year.(*) In fact, according to the United States Census, the murder rate in the United States has dropped 45.1% since 1980; armed robbery is down 44.0%; and rape has decreased by 13.9%.(*) During the same period, the number of Americans living in extreme poverty has increased 22.7%.(*) In the year 2005, 1 in 213 Americans were victims of violent crime, while 1 in 8 lived in poverty.
While it is not my intention to diminish the reality of violent crime and the pain it causes victims, it does seem that our news has gotten out of balance.(*) In an informal survey I took of the local TV news in Greenville, SC, I discovered that violent crime is covered 15 times more often than poverty and its surrounding issues.(*) The question, then, is why does the news so blatantly neglect the problems that affect the most people?(*) Or more to the point, why do we watch?

For starters, crime is more interesting than poverty.(*) It has much greater entertainment value.(*) Incidents of violent crime lend themselves to eye-grabbing headlines and brief, gut-punching stories.(*)(*) Poverty, on the other hand, is boring.(*) A single mother of three struggling to pay the rent cannot compete with the latest shooting at the local mall.
The source of the problem, however, is much deeper than our desire for excitement and entertainment.(*)(*) When we watch stories of “bad” people doing “bad” things, it assures us that we are not bad.(*) We might have our faults, but the real evil is located in the violent criminal.(*) With murderers and rapists as our scapegoats, we can avoid taking responsibility for the economic injustices that permeate our society.
Show us their faces every night, and we can face ourselves in the mirror the next morning.(*) But make us confront the reality of poverty in our own country on a regular basis?(*) That is a different matter altogether. Put that reality on the news each night and just watch how fast the remotes spring into action.
It’s no mystery, then, why crime beats poverty hands down in the fight for coverage.(*) How can this gross imbalance in TV news be corrected?(*) If change is to occur, it will have to come from the consumers.(*) The only way the local news will stop being the local crime report - the only way poverty can begin to get the coverage it deserves - is if we stop watching, and if we let the stations and the advertisers know exactly why.
Jim Moss is a Presbyterian minister from Honea Path, South Carolina. He publishes a blog and a quarterly newsletter called “Discipline for Justice,” which focuses on ways North Americans can live lives that promote peace and economic justice.
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