Make aware, or scare?

Insight on the News, July 6, 1998 by Cheryl Wetzstein

Is school violence really increasing, or is the media guilty of Overkill? Cooler heads are questioning blanket coverage of Tragic but isolated events that some say only `scares moms.'

Around-the-clock coverage of recent shootings in schoolyards and cafeterias -- from heart-wrenching funerals to traumatic back-to-school days -- has saddened the nation and raised new fears among parents. But is such media saturation justified, a necessary investigation of a new and dangerous trend? Or is this just a sales tactic aimed, as one critic puts it, "at scaring moms"?

Some facts: Since 1992, there have been at least 220 violent deaths on school grounds or associated with school events, according to the National School Safety Center at Pepperdine University. In a population of 55 million elementary-and secondary-school students, that breaks down to 1.5 deaths per 1 million students, based on an average of 37 deaths per year. This is comparable to the injury rate for people using Washington's Metrorail escalators--1.6 injuries per 1 million riders.

According to American Enterprise Institute scholar James Glassman, the public is right to demand that preventive measures be taken. "But let's also put these murders into perspective" he argued in a recent opinion piece. Crime generally is declining in the United States, a fact that is a larger, more newsworthy trend than the schoolyard shootings. Yet, coverage of the crime-is-down story pales in comparison with the "inordinate" coverage given to school shootings.

At least two media critics agree with Glassman. "I think there's a new business motto in the media, and it's very simple: scare moms" says Tim Graham, director of media analysis at the Media Research Center. News executives are eager to attract young women and young mothers as viewers, and "one way to get them is to scare them" says Graham. As a result, the media has become "very fond of the someone-else's-kids-are-going-to-hell story."

Coverage of the school shootings has been "definitely overplayed" says Dan Amundson, research director of the Center for Media and Public Affairs. The media's appetite for crime stories has grown insatiable. Incidents that once would have garnered local attention make the national news. "Fifteen years ago, we would have never heard of JonBenet Ramsey," says Amundson.

The media also is attracted to the school shootings because they are happening in small-town America, which is like "a foreign country for national reporters" says Amundson. Instead of reported "expected" stories about inner-city shootings and urban problems, reporters can pose a more startling question: How can a peaceful community produce unhinged children? "We don't know whether this is a growing trend or whether this is just a tragic coincidence" says Amundson.

But Ronald Stephens, executive director of the school-violence center at Pepperdine, disagrees. "In terms of all the incidents out there, in my view, it's a reflection or a trend as opposed to simply a cluster of these activities" he says. Media coverage of the shootings has been correct, both in sending a "wake-up call" to communities and informing people about the warning signs of troubled children.

Stephens points out an incident he believes deserved more coverage than it received: Three sixth-graders in St. Charles, Mo., were caught plotting to enact a killing spree similar to the Jonesboro, Ark., massacre. The youths had told classmates about their grisly plans for the last day of school, and the worried students told parents and a sheriff's department officer who regularly visited the school. "Because of the awareness of the issues there, school and law-enforcement officials were able to put a stop to a potentially deadly copycat incident," Stephens says.

With more than 400,000 incidents of fights, vandalism, theft and rape in public schools last year, the level of violence in schools is intolerable, says Stephens. "If we're going to require young people to attend school, we should provide a school environment that's safe, secure and peaceful."

Ten years ago, Temple University math professor John Allen Paulos explained how the public can be misled by massive media coverage of "isolated but vivid tragedies" involving a few people. "Remember that rarity in itself leads to publicity, making rare events appear commonplace," Paulos wrote in his book, Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences. "Terrorist kidnappings and cyanide poisonings are given monumental coverage, with profiles of the distraught families, etc., yet the number of deaths due to smoking is roughly the equivalent of three fully loaded jumbo jets crashing each and every day of the year."

The youth-hysteria story of the mid-1980s, Paulos explained, involved teens who committed suicide after playing the fantasy game Dungeons and Dragons. "The idea was that teenagers became obsessed with the game, somehow lost contact with reality and ended up killing themselves" he wrote, noting that at least 28 suicides were identified during the mid-eighties. However, if a genuine trend were going on, the number of suicides should have been closer to 360 a year, since 3 million teens played the game and the annual suicide rate was 12 per 100,000 for that age group overall.