Make Way For Context, Balance

Tue., Aug. 11, 1998

Rebecca Nappi For The Editorial

For several weeks after 15-year-old Kip Kinkel shot up his school and killed his classmates, the media analyzed it. Was this a terrible criminal trend? Are our young people hopelessly violent? The questions should have been asked, but what disappeared in the discussion is the truth about young people and crime. They are committing less of it, much less. And crime in general in our country is going down, not up.

The Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs recently released data showing arrests of juveniles for violent crimes, including murder, stand at a 15-year low. Spokane County juvenile courts will handle 17 percent fewer crime cases this year than last.

Road rage is another trend that garnered much press attention in the past year. Drivers angry at life get on the road and take their aggressions out on strangers. Experts declared it an epidemic. An article in August’s Atlantic Monthly dissected the road rage phenomenon. The writer discovered that the statistics the trend was based on were bogus for the most part. The nonscientific study was flawed in major ways. Our roads, the author concluded, are actually getting safer. Highway deaths and accidents have declined in recent years.

So where does the disconnect in reality begin? Part of the problem stems from the “gotta-grab-ya” nature of the media today. Readers, viewers and listeners have to be grabbed quickly because they can tune out just as quickly. Startling headlines and sensational video attract attention, while “good” news does not. In journalism schools and newsrooms, conventional wisdom says: We don’t report on the hundreds of planes that land safely each day; we report on the plane that crashes. That’s the news.

This attitude is slowly changing. Media folks are finally realizing that consumers of news are hungry for context. They want to know how much they should worry about the random crime that happened a block away. Is it a trend or an aberration?

They also want to hear more about solutions, especially in their own communities. And they’d like those solution stories given play equal to what problem stories receive. That’s context, that’s reality.

Community members can play a role in the media balance. Let media organizations know when things are working in your neighborhood. Question statistics and studies that sound too bad (or too good) to be true. Let your voices be heard by writing letters to the editor, calling television and radio stations and explaining the reality of your lives. That’s the news everyone should listen to.

Local journalism is essential.

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