THE
NEW YORK
NEWS MEDIA
AND
THE
CENTRAL
PARK RAPE
Linda
S. Lichter
S. Robert
Lichter
Daniel
Amundson
13
•
V
1^1
THE
AMERICAN
JEWISH
COMMITTEE,
Institute
of
Human
Relations,
165
East
56
Street,
New
York,
NY
10022
2746
CENTER
FOR
MEDIA
AND
PUBLIC AFFAIRS
«ft / ^\ A^L
2101
L
Street.
N.W.
•
Suite
505 •
Washington,
D.C.
20037 V. \i• / C (7 ^7
Linda
S. Lichter,
Ph.D.,
is a
sociologist
specializing in public opinion and political
sociology.
S.
Robert
Lichter,
Ph.D.,
is a political
scientist
specializing in
mass
media and research methods. They
are co-directors of the Center for
Media
and Public Affairs in Washington,
D.C.
Daniel Amundson,
a graduate
student
in
sociology
at George Washington University, is research director at the Center.
Copyright
© 1989 The American Jewish Committee
All
rights reserved
Executive
Summary
The
rape of a jogger in New York's
Central
Park
this spring touched off a controversy over the
media's reporting of
interracial
crimes. Charges
of
sensationalism and racism were raised and debated.
We
have analyzed the topics, themes, and language of local media coverage for two
weeks
after the
attack
(April
20 to May 4). Using the method
of
content analysis, we examined 406 news items in New
York's four daily newspapers, the weekly Amsterdam News, and evening
newscasts
of the
city's
six
television stations.
Although
the
racial
element was conspicuous in this
story,
the content analysis found no evidence
that
media coverage played on
racial
fears or hatreds. On the contrary, the question of race was
repeatedly raised in order to
deny
its relevance to the crime, to warn against reviving
racial
tension, and
to call for a healing
process
to defuse
racial
animosity.
The
study
located several other elements, rooted in traditional news values, that help account
for
the
heavy and emotionally intense "play" the
story
received. These include the randomness and brutality of
the crime, the youth and reported personal and social stability of the
suspects,
and the "human interesf
inherent
in the victim's struggle to recover.
Nonetheless, a troubling
aspect
of the coverage was the use of highly negative and emotional
language
to describe the
suspects,
including frequent aspersions to their animality. The Post epitomized
this approach, but the
study
concludes that the
Post's
coverage was typical
of
a
populist tabloid.
Further,
by concentrating on the
story's
racial
angle, the media largely ignored the attack as a crime against
women-
Major
findings include:
* Race was mentioned as a
possible
explanation for the attack 54 times, more than twice as often
as any other factor. But its relevance was denied 80 percent of those times.
* There were only six references to the attack as a crime against women, that is, as a
demonstration of the perpetrators' virility or power over women or the treatment of women as
sex
objects.
* The crime was
most
often presented as a random act, a consequence of group dynamics, a
product of the subculture of "wild youth," or a result of negative media
messages.
* The
suspects
were described in emotional negative language 390 times, including 185
animal
images such as "wolves," "pack," and "herd."
*
The notion that
the
crime reflected
on the
city's
minority population
was
advanced only once
and
rejected
15
times.
*
Notwithstanding calls
for the
death penalty, greater prudence
by
runners
was
urged more often
than
stronger penalties
for
criminals.
The
study
also uncovered sharp differences
in
coverage
by
different media outlets. Among them:
*
The Post featured
the
most
coverage,
the
most
emotional language (twice
as
much
as any
other
outlet, averaging over three
animal
images
per
day),
and the
most
calls
for
getting tough
on
crime.
*
The Times
had the
least coverage among daily papers
and
the fewest negative descriptions
of
the
attackers, fewest expressions
of
adverse public reaction,
and
fewest calls
for
increased
law-
enforcement efforts. But
the
Times carried denials that
racial
factors were relevant twice
as
often
as
any
other outlet.
*
The Amsterdam News ran
the
most
comparisons
to
previous
racial
violence, identified
the
suspects'
race more often than
any
other outlet,
and
printed
the
most
charges that
the
(white)
media's coverage
was
based
on
racial
factors.
The
study
concludes that
the
coverage
was
split between
a
populist tabloid approach (emotional
language, focus
on
public outrage,
and
calls
for
"law
and
order" measures)
and
concerns about social
responsibility
(the
frequent denial that race
was
relevant
to the
crime).
But
by
treading
so
lightly
on the
race
issue,
the
media
missed
an
opportunity
to
confront
the
racial
undertones that well
up
in
cases
of
interracial
violence, even when
no
overt
racial
motive
is
present.
In
place
of
emotional coverage that
denied
the
relevance
of
race,
a
calmer approach that probed more
deeply
into race relations might have
better served
the
twin goals
of
good journalism
and
good citizenship.
A
Crime
and the
Response
Interracial
violence animates and divides New
Yorkers
more than any topic on the
urban
landscape. It
becomes
a
kind
of
Rorschach
inkblot onto which the city's residents project their fears
and
fantasies. In notorious
cases
from
Howard
Beach to
Tawana
Brawley,
those
reactions have been
partly
guided (or goaded) by the city's lively and diverse
news
media. It is almost inevitable that
the media coverage of
such
highly
sensitive
and divisive incidents
will
itself prove
controversial.
And
so it was with the story of
"wilding"
in
Central
Park.
The
facts of this
case
are relatively simple. A young white female jogger was raped and severely
beaten in
Central
Park
on the night of
April
19, 1989, in a
series
of
assaults
by the same group.
The
first
news
stories appeared the morning of
April
20 as the victim lay in a coma.
That
day and
the next, eight black and Hispanic
teenagers
were arrested and charged with the attack. Meanwhile,
the term
"wilding"
began to grip the imagination of headline writers to describe the
series
of attacks.
On April
23, public reaction heated up after the
suspects
were reported to have boasted that the
attack was
"fun."
Vigils
were held at the place of the attack and elsewhere.
On April
24
Mayor
Koch
and
Governor
Cuomo began to speak out against violent crime and
call
for new measures to deal with it. On
April
26 and 27 the first indictments were handed down.
The
last few days of the month saw outpourings of sympathy for the victim and outrage against the
attackers.
Cardinal
O'Connor
visited the
victim,
who had begun to emerge
from
her comatose
state.
And
Donald
Trump
ran a newspaper advertisement calling for restoration of the death penalty.
During
the first days of
May,
the victim showed further
signs
of recovery, and the media reported
several rapes of young women in
Harlem
and a sexual assault on another jogger in
Central
Park.
By
this time the city was in an
uproar
over the
case,
which continued to receive heavy press
coverage. Not
surprisingly,
that coverage was itself
drawn
into the controversy.
Critics
charged that
its emotionalism was sensationalistic at
best
and racist at worst.
Concerned
about the
effect
on interracial
tensions
in New
York
of media coverage of just such
an
explosive incident as the
Central
Park
rape, the Institute for
American
Pluralism
and the Center
for
Media
and Public
Affairs
undertook a study and evaluation of the press and television coverage
of
that
event
We did so by means of content analysis, a method of studying how information is
conveyed. Coders tabulated the topics, viewpoints, and language of
local
media coverage
from
April
20 to May 4, the first two
weeks
after the attack. The
outlets
examined were the major daily
newspapers ~ the
Times,
Post,
Daily
News;
the
Amsterdam News,
a weekly paper aimed at the city's
black
community,
and the evening
newscasts
on television
stations
WABC, WCBS, WNBC, WNYW,
WWOR,
and
WPIX."
The study included editorials, signed columns, and
letters
to the editor in
addition
to straight
news
stories, because
these
forums of
opinion
were an integral part of the media
treatment, especially in the tabloids.
Amount
of
Coverage
In
fifteen days,
from
April
20 through May 4, the 11
outlets
we examined
carried
406
news
items (table 1)." These included 313
news
stories, 42 editorials or signed columns, and 51
letters
to the editor. In the newspapers, which ran 190
news
stories overall, the crime was front-page
news
34 times. The heaviest
print
coverage was the
Post's,
whose
957 column inches included 46
news
stories, 13 editorials or columns, and 42
letters
to the editor. The printing of so many
letters
was
in
itself a
kind
of editorial statement. The
Daily
News
nearly matched the
Post
in space allocated
to the story (948 column inches) and exceeded it in
news
and editorial coverage. It was the
profusion
of letters, which functioned mainly as a sounding
board
for popular outrage, that set the
Post
apart. The
Post
also led all
outlets
in the prominence accorded the story, with 12 front-page
headlines. By contrast, the
Times
ran only 24 stories, including two on the front page, and five
editorials or op-ed pieces.
Even
the weekly
Amsterdam News
printed 13 items, including four
news
stories on the front page, in the two
issues
included in our sample period.
Broadcast
coverage was equally diverse.
WABC
was the clear leader, with 45 stories totaling
over 83 minutes of airtime.
That
was more than
half
again as much time as any other station
devoted to the story. The other major network affiliates
(WCBS
and
WNBC)
ran fewer stories
combined
than
WABC
Among
the independents, Fox's
WNYW
led with 28 stories lasting nearly
55 minutes.
WWOR
and
WPIX
lagged far behind with only 16 stories
between
them.
Print
coverage totaled 3,415 column inches, broadcast
news
4.25 hours.
"
We analyzed the
April
29 and May 5
issues
of the
Amsterdam News,
because the
April
22
issue
went
to press too early to include any mention of the attack.
Among
the television outlets,
we analyzed the 6:00 p.m. broadcasts of
WNYW
and
WPIX
and the 10:00 p.m. broadcast of
WWOR.
"
We were unable to procure the May 3
issue
of
Newsday.
Topics
Media
attention quickly transcended the facts of the crime and the subsequent police
investigation. The most heavily covered topics were neither of
these,
but rather the victim's story
and
public reaction to the attack (table 2). The victim's uncertain recovery became a compelling
human-interest story that extended the
normal
period of press attention. But even this was eclipsed
by
coverage of the public reaction to the assault
The
assault gripped the public emotionally, and it
seemed
for a time that every New
Yorker
had
both an opinion about it and the opportunity to
express
that opinion to a reporter, litis was
a
specialty of the
Post,
which ran 48 items dealing with public reaction, twice as many as any other
outlet (By contrast, the
Post
gave
only passing coverage to the victim, about
half
as much as the
other two daily tabloids.) The
Times
stood out among dailies for its lack of coverage in
these
areas -- only six stories on the victim and 16 on public reaction. The weekly
Amsterdam News
also
had
a distinctive profile, with no stories on the victim or the facts of the crime, only one on the
police investigation, but eight on public reaction. As we shall see, this paper's idiosyncratic
approach
to the story set it apart
from
the dailies.
Among
the television outlets,
WABC
stood out by offering over twice as much coverage as any
other station on the victim's
background,
her recovery, and the public's reaction. The other
stations
concentrated their airtime on more traditional crime-story topics, such as the attack itself and the
ongoing police investigations (though
WABC
led in covering even
these
aspects).
The
print
media differed most markedly
from
television in considering the attack in the context
of
broader
social problems.
Thirty
stories dealt extensively with contextual
issues
like the
racial
and
class
disparities in New
York,
government cutbacks in social programs, and the difficulties that
working
parents have in monitoring their teenaged children. All but two of
these
stories (93
percent) appeared in
print.
The leading source of social-context stories was the
Post,
with 11.
Framing
the
Story
We
move
from
the
broad
contours of coverage to its substance. We asked first whether the
media
presented the crime in terms of
certain
conceptual frameworks that structured the audience's
perception of it ״ as a
racial
crime, for instance, or a crime against women, or an example of a sick
or
lawless
society. It was not enough to mention such a factor in passing; it had to be directly
related to the nature or larger meaning of the crime. Most coverage did not use such a framing
device; it was absent in 74 percent of
print
and 97 percent of broadcast stories.
Eight
such conceptual frameworks were identified, although
some
were introduced only to be
rejected (table 3).
Chief
among them was the randomness of the attack, which the police called a
"crime
of opportunity." The crime's apparent lack of purpose or meaning beyond immediate
gratification
was cited 19 times, far more than any other factor.
On
May 2, for example,
Times
columnist Tom
Wicker
wrote: "Ironically, the crime itself
does
not
seem
to have been stereotypical ״ committed by
drug
addicts or hardened
street
criminals,
drug
related or racially motivated, or the product of definable social conditions." He concluded that the
crime
was "a chance
event
that could have happened to anyone unfortunate enough to have crossed
the path of the wilding youths." Two days later, the
Times
repeated the point in an unsigned
editorial:
"Those arrested evidently did not act out of
racial
hostility, involvement with drugs or
economic deprivation.
They
apparently believed they could get away with random brutality."
Tied
for second, with 11 mentions each, were the notions that this was either a sexually
motivated crime or an instance of interracial violence (without
racial
motivation). Almost as
frequent, with ten mentions, were stories that portrayed the attack as an example of
wild
or
lawless
youth.
For
example, one
Newsday
story
(April
25) began,
"Driven
by rage, sexual lust and boredom,
free-floating bands of
restless
youths have preyed on New
York
City
neighborhoods for a decade,
say social workers and
urban
crime experts." An additional nine stories considered the crime within
the framework of
racial
conflict.
Finally,
five
news
items portrayed the crime as an example of our "sick society," and another
five
raised
the
issue
of violent crimes against women (beyond merely describing the crime as a
sexual assault). The arguments about a sick society ranged
from
discussions of the
case
at hand
to critiques of the underlying social conditions alleged to produce such behavior.
For
example, the
Times
published (May 1) an op-ed piece by Elizabeth Sturtz that charged: "These kids look into
the future and see nothing promising.
They
breathe the contagion of violence in a society where
guns are worshiped and material objects and self-gratification are made to
seem
the aim of life."
In
an era of heightened feminist consciousness, it is notable that complaints about the
prevalence of crimes against women were raised so rarely, indeed no more often than charges of a
generalized social sickness.
Very
few sources echoed the opinions of a
Harlem
woman quoted
(April
26) in the
Daily News:
"It's a male and female thing. ... That's what this is about.
This
happened to a woman"; or a female jogger quoted
(April
21) in
Newsday:
"I've heard that stuff
about joggers being
safe
because they don't
carry
money before.... But a woman can't leave home
the thing the perverts and the two-legged animals want most
—
their sexuality. ... a woman who
runs
here at night is like
Bambi
in hunting season."
Explanations
With
the early arrests of
suspects,
the story quickly became
less
a whodunit than a "whydunit."
Why
the crime occurred became the central question that animated media coverage (table 4). The
279
responses
that were printed or aired ranged
from
the
suspects'
motives or mindsets to systemic
factors that either predispose young people to violence or
fail
to prevent it
from
occurring.
The
vast majority of proffered explanations were simply asserted or affirmed. But we also noted
those
whose
relevance or validity was denied.
Race
was the explanation discussed most often in the media. It was cited 54 times, more than
twice as often as any other possible cause. But its relevance was denied on 43 (80 percent) of
those
occasions.
More
than a
third
of
these
denials (14) appeared in the
Times,
but the pattern
was similar in every other outlet
except
the
Amsterdam News,
which provided equal space to
those
who affirmed and
those
who denied the relevance of race.
Thus
on
April
26 the
Times
quoted a teenager
from
the
suspects*
neighborhood:
"This
is not
a
black and white
issue.
They
hurt a woman and race is a cover-up. The are just bad kids." The
same day the
Daily News
quoted an East
Harlem
mother: "No color mattered. It ain't about black
and
white. It's a male and female thing. The victim,
she's
a human. That's what this is about.
This
happened to a woman." Two days later the
Times
quoted a mother of two to the same
effect:
"It wasn't a group of blacks and Hispanics who raped this white woman, it was a group of
children
who raped this woman. I think they would have been as vicious with a black woman."
No
television outlet ever asserted a
racial
motive, while
seven
broadcast
statements
specifically
denying
it.
The
overwhelming rejection of a
racial
motive is unusual in media coverage of such an
event.
Our
previous
studies
indicate that sociological explanations of
events
tend to be countered by
competing explanations rather than simply and repeatedly denied. It
suggests
a
kind
of
"Lady
Macbeth
syndrome," with the media providing a forum for sources concerned to
defuse
racial
tensions
exacerbated by a particularly abhorrent crime. Among the sources denying any
racial
motive
were
Mayor
Koch,
mayoral candidate
David
Dinkins, the police, and church leaders. Of the
four
unattributed
statements
to this
effect,
three appeared in the New
York Times.
We deal with
the media's treatment of the
racial
dimension in more detail below.
After
race, the explanations mentioned most often
were
the group dynamics or mob psychology
of
the attackers, the antisocial subculture of youth
gangs,
and the
thesis
of a "random act" - the
notion that this was an aberrant or otherwise unpremeditated crime. (This category included
reports that the
suspects
themselves
cited
"fun"
and "boredom" as their
motives.)
Typical
of the group-dynamics explanation was a
Daily News
quote
(April
25) from a psychiatric
social worker: "It's basically like a feeding frenzy by sharks. You get a group disinhibition where
any conscience or moral controls that would prevent them from going out and doing anything they
want -
even
murder ~ completely break down. There are no more rules." Sources who blamed
the attack on contemporary youth culture tended to
echo
a writer on children's
issues
who argued
(April
28) in the
Times:
"There is in this city among
teen-agers,
white and black, something that
is anarchic They feel that anything
goes,
that all the rules have broken down."
The
notion of randomness was
sometimes
brought to fend off the topic of sociological
explanations cited below.
For
example,
Newsday
quoted
(April
25)
Mayor
Koch's
statement:
"That's
what it is - a gang-bang rape. You name one
society
[sic] reason that you can
give
to explain
that. Most kids don't commit crimes.
You're
talking about an aberrant group." At other
times
the crime's very randomness was treated as a sign of a troubling,
even
chilling sociological
phenomenon. Thus another article in the
same
issue
of
Newsday
quoted journalist Bruce Porter:
"These are just kids erupting. There really is not a precedent for this
kind
of unfocused rage. We
are
seeing
the fiery tip of something we haven't explained."
These explanations
were
followed in frequency by a number of more traditional sociological
background
factors ״ poverty, drugs (the pattern of violence associated within the
drug
subculture),
media
messages
that encourage violent behavior, family breakdowns or inadequate parental
supervision,
cuts
in government social programs, and social
class
(have-nots
striking out against the
haves). Some of
these
broadened out into lengthy perorations about the misdirected social policies
that plant the
seeds
of violent crime. For example,
Pete
Hamill
charged in the
Post:
"Under
Reagan,
violence became entwined with policy. You don't like the Sandinistas?
Fine:
Kill
them.
Having
trouble in Beirut? Shell them. Don't care for the government in Grenada? Get rid of
them at gunpoint. If violence was permissible for the government, who in government could lecture
the
American
young to be pacific?" Dr. Roscoe
Brown,
Jr.,
was quoted (May 6) in a similar vein
in
the
Amsterdam News:
[New
York]
has not learned that the violence and disrespect for the basic human
needs
and values we see and hear daily on sensationalized television programs and
in
the multi-colored headlines of our
town's
newspapers
sends
a
message
about the
low value we place on human dignity. ... So should our city be surprised that a
group
of
Black
and Hispanic youths acted out the violent rage that has been
nurtured
by our media and the way the city
treats
its citizens?
Explanations
related to the attackers' poverty and the
drug
subculture
were
debated and rejected
about as often as they
were
affirmed. For example, the
Daily News
reported
(April
25)
Mayor
Koch's
rejection of the crime and poverty linkage: "The mayor said he refused to accept poverty
or
discrimination as the root
causes
of the attack. 'Poor people overwhelmingly don't commit
crimes,'
he said."
References to the media's role mostly referred to concerns about violence in television, movies,
and
rap music. For example, a
Post column
cited
(April
24)
Cardinal
O'Connor's
complaint about
"the inordinate power of television and movies that glorify sex and violence."
And
the
Times
quoted
a
Johns Hopkins professor who warned: "Dim and troubled people
will
take very powerful
suggestions
from
the media.... How can the
criminal
values of many of the action
shows
help but
have an effect?"
Thus
the assault was most often explained as a random act or a product of
group
dynamics (25
citations apiece), followed closely by youth subculture (24) and the negative impact of media
messages
(20).
This
debate was
carried
on mainly in the newspapers, where six out of every
seven
explanations (86 percent) appeared. The only explanations offered with any
frequency
on television
were race, youth culture, and "random act."
The
assault was
least
often explained in terms of male-female relations and
minority
subcultures.
We
found only six references to the abuse of women as evidence of
virility.
One reference made
in
passing is worth noting. It came in an
April
24
Newsday
interview with a
Brooklyn
Bad Boys
Club
member: "If you are any
kind
of
bad
boy, you don't need to do that to a
broad.
There's too
many
broads wild to do it already. All you got to do is be holding. That's what money is for
—
clothes, women, fun, get high."
Minority
subcultural models, which are often used to explain
patterns of violence, the second-class
status
of women, etc., within
urban
populations, were offered
only
twice and rejected both times.
Exploring
the
Racial Angle
A
persistent theme in media coverage of the assault was concern that the crime and its
aftermath
would worsen relations
between
blacks and
whites
in New
York.
We coded every
viewpoint published or broadcast about the impact the crime might have on any aspect of life in
the city (table 5). By far the most common view was the fear that it would increase
racial
tension
or
encourage negative
stereotypes
of nonwhites. As 15-year-old Kai Lewis put it
(April
26) in the
Post,
"We aren't all like that and I hope people don't stereotype us as being like
those
kids."
This
opinion
appeared 29 times; nearly
half
the citations (13) appeared in the
Times; Daily News
reporter
Mike
McAlary
developed this theme at length on
April
26:
The
phone lines to this newspaper are busy with people screaming,
"Call
the
case
for
what it is.
Black
savages
rape white
girl."
No one is even making an attempt
to mask their racism. . . . Manhattan prosecutor Robert Morgenthau . . .
announce[d] that the
case
had nothing to do with race. But no one wanted to hear.
The
newspapers came out in the morning and we have a bias incident complete with
the quote: "Let's go get whitey." It's doubtful, I am told, that the words were even
said...
. But the words are right there in the newspaper, stamped into our brains.
Now
mothers in East
Harlem
. . .
find
themselves
on
trial.
Discussions of the crime's impact on
criminal
justice finished a distant second, with 12 opinions
expressed. These included calls for toughening the juvenile-justice system, restoring the death
penalty, and preventing vigilantism.
As
if in response to such concerns, several other race-related
themes
appeared repeatedly in the
coverage. The most frequent of
these
concerned the need to heal
racial
wounds opened by the
attack. Such
statements
appeared 22 times, split almost evenly
between
print
(12) and television
(10). For example, the
Times
quoted
(April
26) the president of the Schomburg Plaza Residents*
Council
(where several
suspects
lived), who led a prayer
vigil
for the victim:
"Through
prayer we
can
heal the wounds on her body and the
racial
wounds this has caused to society.. . The need
for
racial
healing was featured most prominently in
Newsday
(six citations) and on
WABC
(five
times).
Nearly
as common was a rejection of the notion that this crime somehow indicted the black
community
as a whole or reflected negative
cultural
patterns characteristic of minority populations.
This
argument was advanced only once. It was rejected 15 times, most often in the
pages
of the
Post
(seven
instances).
Thus,
on
April
26 the
Post
quoted a black teenager: "I feel bad 1 have to
be associated with people like that. All blacks shouldn't be painted with the same
brush."
Similarly,
the
Times
quoted
(April
28) one Manhattanite: "People scream it's a
racial
episode, but
I
disagree. There are very good black people and very bad white people. .. ."
There
was greater willingness to interpret the attack as an indictment of behavior within
teen
subcultures. For example, the
Times
quoted
(April
26) a
Harlem
teenager:
This
is not
racial.
It
has to do with peer pressure.
Kids
follow each other.
They
wouldn't say this is wrong when among
friends."
Variations on this argument were raised nearly as often as the responsibility of the black
community
(13 times), but it was affirmed more often than it was rejected (54 to 46 percent).
Concern
over the impact of this incident on minorities even spread into the debate over the
justice system.
This
aspect of the coverage was mainly a
forum
for calls to "get tough" on crime
and
violent offenders. Nonetheless, the question of
racial
bias in the juvenile-justice system was
raised
11 times. We coded eight assertions that the system was biased against minorities, while
only
one source defended it against the charge (the others reached no conclusion). These charges
were raised most often by activists like Reverend Al Sharpton and attorney
Alton
Maddox
and by
one
suspect's
attorney. For example, the
Post
reported
(April
24) Sharpton's charge that "the white
teens
involved in the
Howard
Beach attack on a black man were granted
bail,
unlike
these
teens."
Another
indication of the media's sensitivity to
racial
issues
was the frequent comparisons of
the
Central
Park
assault to other interracial crimes (table 6). There were 55
print
mentions of
prior
incidents, led by
Howard
Beach (20), Tawana Brawley (8), and
Bernhard
Goetz (5). However,
only
33 of
these
sought to compare either the facts of the
cases
or the public's responses.
And
only
30 percent of the comparisons found
some
similarity
between
the current
case
and a previous one,
while 70 percent pointed out differences or warned against faulty comparisons.
By
far the largest number of comparisons appeared in the
Amsterdam News,
whose
two
issues
contained 43 percent of all comparisons. The
Amsterdam News
repeatedly counterpoised the
Central
Park
assault against instances of blacks attacked by white policemen or mobs, such as
Michael
Griffith
(Howard Beach)
Derrick
Tyrus,
Michael
Stewart, Akeem Davis, and even the
Scottsboro Boys
(seven
young blacks sentenced to death in
Alabama
in 1931 for
raping
two white
girls).
For example, the
April
29
issue
included an interview with the
suspects'
attorney
Golin
Moore,
who alleged a pattern of
rapid
arrests in black-on-white crimes but a lack of arrests in
white-on-black crimes. The story contrasted "fashion model
Maria
Hanson, Dr.
Kathyrn
Hinnant
of
Bellevue Hospital and the
Marshank
brothers of Staten Island, all of whom were attacked by
African
Americans," with the absence of arrests in the
cases
of "Tawana Brawley . . .
Derrick
Antonio
Tyrus
of Staten Island, . . . Akeem Davis of Brooklyn's
Park
Slope community, and
Frederick
Pinckley in
Williamsburg."
Other
sources were restrained in raising comparisons to other
racial
incidents, only six sources
pointing
out similarities and 12 denying them out of 393
news
items. For example, the
Times
ran
only
three comparisons (all to
Howard
Beach) and
Newsday
published only two (one to
Howard
Beach
and one to Tawana Brawley). All six television
stations
combined for only
seven
such
mentions, only one of which found a point of similarity.
Thus
״ with the exception of the
Amsterdam News
-- the reluctance to
find
a
racial
aspect to the crime extended to a reluctance to
find
points of comparisons to previous
racial
incidents.
Finally,
perhaps the ultimate
test
of the media's sensitivity to the
racial
angle was their
willingness to air complaints about
racial
bias in their own coverage. Most of the sources that
expressed concern about the heavy media coverage attributed it to
racial
attitudes
harmful
to
minorities.
This
argument appeared 40 times, split evenly
between
those
who asserted that the race
of
the victim increased the attack's visibility (22) and
those
who made the point indirectly by
asserting that black-on-black crime received
less
coverage than black-on-white crime.
Only
four
sources pointed to the victim's upper-class background as a reason for media interest, and none
linked
the amount of coverage to either the sexual nature of the crime or the amount of violence
involved.
The Amsterdam News
led with nine references to
racial
bias in the media coverage, all but one
criticizing
the lack of coverage of black-on-black crimes. The
Times
and
Daily
News
were
close
behind
with eight, although the
Times
took the opposite tack of pointing directly to the victim's
race in
seven
of the eight instances we coded. For example, the
Daily
News
quoted
(April
22) one
Harlem
resident: "If it were a black woman in a black neighborhood, no one would care about
this"; and four days later, another:
"You
wouldn't be here if she was black."
The Amsterdam News
went
further, publishing a lengthy front-page story on May 6 contrasting
this
case
with the recent rape and
murder
of a black woman in
Central
Park
that received
less
press
attention. The story quoted Reverend
Calvin
Butts: "We haven't heard a thing about this incident
in
the press....
This
is just another indication that
class
and race have a lot to do with the value
people put on life." And Father Lawrence Lucas was quoted as saying:
"This
is another example
of
the fact that in this society, the press, the police, district attorney and religious leaders consider
white life at a far greater value than black life."
This
alleged
link
between
race and
news
was the leading subject of controversy over the media's
handling
of the story. By comparison, only eight sources (led by the
Amsterdam News
with three
items)
complained about sensationalistic, irresponsible, or otherwise questionable media coverage.
As
in the debate over the crime
itself,
the
racial
angle dominated the debate over the media's
treatment of it.
For
all the hullabaloo over media attention to black-on-white crime, however, surprisingly few
stories even identified the race of either
suspects
or victim (table 7).
Only
41
news
items, one in
ten, identified the race of one or more
suspects,
and even fewer, 34 or one in 12, specified that the
victim
was white.
Moreover,
the outlet most likely to identify
suspects
as blacks was the
Amsterdam
News.
When
its nine references are deleted, the remaining media revealed the
suspects'
racial
background
only 32 times, or in one of every 12
news
items ~ the same proportion that mentioned
the victim's race. The number rises when accompanying pictures are included as identifiers
(especially for television). But even including both words and pictures, three out of four items
contained no information about the
suspects'
racial
background.
Negative
Language
If
the media were so careful to avoid or refute assertions that the actions of
these
youths
־10־
reflected more broadly on minorities, then why did the coverage prove controversial? The answer
is that objections were raised not so much to what was said as to how it was said. The quality of
language,
particularly
the use of
harsh
terms to describe the
suspects,
was itself
seen
as inflammatory
or
discriminatory.
As Congressman
Floyd
Flake
charged
(April
29) in the
Amsterdam News:
The
press clearly
gives
the impression of Blacks as being animals in a wolfpack. And by placing
these
young
men individually in the paper, the press did their historical stereotyping that inevitably leads
to more division among the various ethnic groups in the city."
To
evaluate this aspect of the coverage, we noted every instance of emotion-charged language
to describe the attackers or the crime itself (table 8). Negative imagery used to describe the
attackers or their behavior fell into four distinct categories: terms that evoked animality
(e.g.,
"wolfpack,"
"herd,"
"bestial");
criminality
("thugs,"
"gang,"
"crime
spree");
aggressiveness
("marauders,"
"war
party,"
"hungry for action"), and a catchall category of colorful negative terminology ("wildeyed
teens,"
"fiends,"
"these
goddamned people"). The repeated use of such language
gave
the coverage
a
heightened emotional or sensationalistic flavor.
Altogether
we counted 390
uses
of strongly negative words or phrases to denigrate the attackers.
Nearly
half
of this total, 185
uses,
consisted of animal imagery. For example, one
Daily
News
editorial
began: "There was a
full
moon Wednesday night. A suitable backdrop for the howling of
wolves. A vicious pack ran rampant through
Central
Park."
The references to animality were
perhaps typified by Congressman Charles RangePs
statement
(Amsterdam News,
April
29) that he
had
"never
seen
such an animalistic attack"; in fact, "calling them animals and wolfjpack is an insult
to animals and wolves." The
Post's
Pete
Hamill
made
(April
25) the same point in even stronger
terms by decrying "a bizarre new
form
of life... who
call
themselves
men ... the mutants among
us." He concluded,
"
And for now, we should
stop
libeling wolves."
The
second largest category of emotion-charged language, with 122 references, disparaged the
attackers by using
epithets
that evoked their
criminality.
A much smaller number of references (45)
focused on the attackers'
aggressiveness.
Finally,
there were
some
highly charged descriptions that
defied categorization, other than to
express
anger at the type of people who could commit such a
crime.
Of
course, many
pieces
combined several of
these
images. For example, on May 1 the
Posts
Mary
McGrory,
no hard-had conservative, was moved to
call
the attackers "life's losers," "a pack
..
. out
1
wilding,"'
"fiends," and "punks." A
Newsday
story on
April
24 condemned "wolf-pack stuff,"
and
"random pack violence." And in another column,
Hamill
called
(April
23) the group
"demented,"
"
a
savage
little pack," and
"these
brutalized little sociopaths."
As
these
examples
suggest,
negative characterizations were most prominent in the tabloids,
especially the
Post.
Just under 90 percent of them appeared in the newspapers, and the
Post
led
all
other
outlets
in all four categories, accounting for 30 percent of all negative imagery.
The Posfs
lead
in negative language was particularly pronounced in the catchall category of unusual colorful
phrases; its writers contributed 60 percent of this total. For example, on
April
25 columnist
Jerry
Nachman
likened the attackers to "an invading melanoma" and an "anonymous,
faceless
tumor
mass." The next day he came up with an even more graphic metaphor: a
"rolling
mass
of pus."
But
this couldn't top Hamill's grisly image
from
April
23: "And then, out of the New
York
darkness,
comes
the lewd and wide-eyed mask of death.
Grinning."
Even
this outpouring of obloquy against the attackers was dwarfed by denunciations of the
attack
itself.
The brutality and randomness of the crime were repeatedly evoked in verbiage that
expressed outrage and
horror.
The number of times emotionally charged phrases were used to
depict the crime was nearly twice that of
epithets
aimed at the attackers (768 vs. 390). The phrases
-11־
fell
into three categories: descriptions of the violence
("savage,"
"bloody," "gang bang"), emotional
evocations of randomness
("senseless,"
"frenzy," "wilding"), and negative reactions to the
event
("chilling,"
"abhorrent," "outrage").
We
coded 322 references to the violence of the crime. The random or unprovoked quality of
the attack sparked 274 emotional references.
Finally,
172 references expressed the negative
reactions of the populace or the writer. For example, a
Times
editorial condemned
(April
21) the
attack's "savagery" and "atrocity";
Newsday
quoted
Mayor
Koch
on the "savagery" of "this terrible
crime
. . . this outrageous act"; the
Post's
Ray
Kerrison
decried "the appalling savagery" as
"obscene" and
"horrifying";
ana the
Amsterdam News
quoted an assistant district attorney who
claimed,
"This
was the most vicious and
brutal
assault that has occurred in New
York
City
to date."
Once
again, colorful language was mainly the property of the press (80 percent of all instances
vs. 20 percent on television). And the
Post
again led all other outlets, far outdistancing its
competitors in strong depictions of violence and negative reactions. It was the
Tunes,
however, that
led
in descriptions of randomness, reflecting its
extensive
coverage of the phenomenon of
"wilding."
Combining
terms applied to both the crime and the attackers produced an overall total of 1,158
instances of negative phrasing. The
Post
was the clear leader in emotionally charged verbiage with
309, about
half
again as many as any other outlet. Roughly similar
levels
were found at the
Times
(200),
Newsday
(211),
and the
Daily
News
(193).
Television lagged far behind, with emotion-laden
language evident roughly in proportion to each
outlet's
amount of coverage
—
highest at
WABC,
followed by the other network affiliates and then the independents.
The
Suspects'
Backgrounds
These
vivid
and frequent denunciations of the attackers and the crime were set against a
backdrop
of puzzlement over the apparent emotional and social stability of the
suspects.
Indeed,
reports of their "positive" personality traits or demeanors became a
kind
of ironic counterpoint to
the brutality of the crime with which they were charged (table 9).
We
coded 110 descriptions of the
suspects'
personal traits
prior
to the alleged attack. Ninety-
two of
these
(84 percent) were positive (including terms such as "non-violent," "decent," and "well-
adjusted"), and only
seven
(6 percent) were negative, and the rest were neutral.
This
retrain was
sounded most often in
Newsday
(28 times), although such characterizations appeared regularly in
all
the daily papers. Television mostly failed to develop this aspect of the story, with the exception
of
WABC
(which aired
half
of the 20 video references coded).
Thus
a
Newsday
story on
April
22 quoted one
suspect's
friend,
"They're good boys." The
reporter
observed,
"They
could be good
students
and polite
sons,
but they could be transformed
when surrounded by a wilding pack
...."
Nearly a
week
later another
Newsday
piece quoted
(April
28) one
suspect's
father, "He's a good
kid";
another's
girlfriend,
"He was nice and everything ... it
shocked me ... I knew him so well"; and the teacher of a
third,
who called him "well-behaved" and
"likable."
It is typical of crime coverage to eulogize the victim. In this
case,
however, the
suspects'
personalities were extolled even more often than the victim's (table 10). She was termed "pretty,"
"personable,"
"smart,"
"diligent," etc. only 70 times, although positive reports of her accomplishments
or
social potential ("rising star," "fast track," etc.) would
bring
the total up to 114 encouraging
words.
-12-
Obviously
the intent of this coverage was not to compare the
suspects
favorably with the victim.
It was intended to contrast the
brutal
behavior during the attack they
were
alleged to have
committed with their apparently exemplary behavior
prior
to it. But the comparison points out how
important
this contrast was to the story. It drove home the
theme
of "good kids turned
bad,"
which
contributed
to the
sense
that their alleged crime was shocking, unexpected, or incomprehensible.
Thus
the
Times
quoted
(April
28) one East Sider:
"That
was the first shock: They're average city
kids.
If they
were
street
kids you could blame it on poverty. In a
sense
they
were
anybody's kids.
Here
you don't know where to put the blame."
Similarly,
frequent references to the victim's attractiveness, intelligence, and once-bright
prospects heightened the dramatic contrast and strengthened the implication that no one is
safe.
Newsday
columnist Jimmy Breslin played on this contrast in an
April
21 column that raised the
specter of two New
Yorks
on a collision course: The young woman . . . could not, with all her
schooling and all her
success
. . . envision a kid like this. ... If she had realized that the other
New
York
throws out kids like this by...
tens
of thousands, she wouldn't have been running alone
at night in the
park."
Public
Reaction
If
there was an inflammatory quality to
some
of the language used to describe this story, the
pot was
also
kept boiling by reports of public outrage and associated calls for crackdowns on crime.
We
noted earlier that reports on public reaction provided the single most frequent topic of
coverage. We
also
measured the substance of
those
reports
(table
11). They served most frequently
as a means to convey public anger (41 instances), followed by expressions of shock (20), fear (20),
and
sorrow (19).
These accounts of public reaction provided one of the
best
indicators of differences in the flavor
of
coverage at the various media
outlets.
As we found with colorful language, this was a specialty
of
print coverage. The press ran two reports of public reaction for every one that appeared on
television (66 to 34). And
once
again, the
Post
led all print
outlets,
by an
even
larger margin than
its use of strong language. In fact, the
Post
ran
twice
as many public-response
items
(30) as any
other
news
organization. The
Post
was particularly prone to print expressions of anger at the crime
—
almost
twice
as many as the olher four newspapers combined. At the other end of the print
spectrum was the
Times,
which ran only three examples of citizen reaction.
Thus
on
April
25 the
Post
editorialized, "The anger sweeping through the city ... is a healthy
sign, an indication that New
Yorkers
are not yet willing to surrender their city to savagery." The
next
day a
Times
editorial began, "The
news
inspires
horror
and outrage." The
Post
columnist
Pete
Hamill
provided
(April
23) one expression of sorrow by quoting a black resident of the city,
Thing
like
that happens, it breaks everybody's heart - the family, friends, hell, anyone with
some
kinda
feelings." And in the
Amsterdam News,
Dr. Roscoe
Brown,
Jr.,
acknowledged that "all New
Yorkers
are repulsed and outraged by the
Central
Park
attack," before asking, "What is the value of
reiterating such phrases as Volf-pack' and
'savages'
in the press and on television?"
Differences among broadcast
outlets
were
equally striking.
WABC
(12) and
WCBS
(13) vied
for
the lead in airing expressions of public outrage, concern, etc., while
WNBC
refrained from
broadcasting any emotional reactions. The remaining
stations
confined
themselves
to recording a
few expressions of public anger. The emotional impact of man-on-the-street
statements
was, of
course, heightened by the visual medium. For example,
WABC
aired
(April
22) a denunciation by
a neighbor of a
suspect
who concluded angrily, "I got no patience with any of them. I hope you
get 'em!"
-13-
Preventing
Violent Crime
The
sharp differences among
outlets
in their use of language and reporting of public reaction
extended to one other controversial topic ״ media-borne calls for a crackdown on crime. We
analyzed
all discussion of measures intended to prevent future attacks of this sort (table 12). Most
of
these
concerned calls for tougher penalties, more police, or altering the behavior of
runners.
The
debate over tougher penalties received the most coverage. The 43 citations ran nearly four to one
in
favor of such measures as restoring the death penalty and trying juveniles as adults. (This did
not include Donald
Trump's
paid
advertisement,
except
when cited in
news
stories.)
Much
of this
debate took place in the
Post,
which accounted for 60 percent of
all
references to increased penalties
for
criminals.
Thus
on
April
23 the
Post
quoted extensively
from
Mayor
Koch's address to the
Columbian
Lawyers
Association, in which he called for treating juvenile offenders as adults: "Anyone who
committed this rape is not a
child.
They
should be subject to the
full
range of
imprisonment."
In
a
similar vein, the
Daily News
quoted
(April
28) Representative
Chuck
Douglas
(R-NH),
"If
you're
gonna do big boy crime, you're gonna do big boy time." And a
Newsday
story quoted
(April
30)
the headline of Donald
Trump's
newspaper ad,
"Bring
back the death penalty!
Bring
back our
police!" On the other side of the law-and-order
issue,
a
Times
editorial titled
"Lunging
for Death"
lamented (May 4) that
"some
people abandon talk of deterrence and speak of
primitive
vengeance.
.
. . The death penalty would only pander to an ugly mob mood."
An
associated theme was the need for more police or increased patrols in
Central
Park,
mentioned by 30 sources (including two who questioned the efficacy of such measures). Once again
the
Post
led with nine mentions. For example, on
April
23 it quoted mayoral candidate
Ronald
Lauder's
assertion that "an incident like this might not have happened" if there were more police
patrols in central
Park.
If
these
two categories are combined to
form
a single "law-and-order"
dimension,
the
Post
accounted for nearly
half
the discussion of stronger law-enforcement measures
(35 of 73 mentions, or 48 percent). At the other end of the
print
spectrum was the
Times,
with
only
two mentions, even fewer than the weekly
Amsterdam News.
Not
all the calls for preventive measures were calls for law and order. Greater prudence by
runners
was urged even more often than stronger penalties for criminals (by 36 vs. 34 sources
favoring
such measures). These measures were urged mainly by
Newsday,
which ran 44 percent of
all
suggestions
that runners avoid the
park
at night, stay below 90th Street, run in pairs, etc.
Typical
of this theme was advice
from
the often-quoted
Fred
Lebow, president of the New
York
Roadrunners
Club
(Newsday,
April
21): "If you run late in the evening, do not run above 90th
Street. Don't wear jewelry, don't wear a
Walkman.
If you've got to run at night run on the
Fifth
Avenue
sidewalk."
There
is an historical irony to this aspect of the coverage, because
Central
Park
was conceived
by
its creators as a place where all
classes
of people could peacefully mingle.
This
assumption
lasted well into the twentieth century.
Thus
the transformation of the
park
into a dangerous place
("the ultimate nightmare") holds
deep
resonance as a symbol of the breakdown of
urban
life. Hence
the
Daily News's
editorial cry on
April
22: "The city must struggle constantly to insure that
Central
Park
is open to everyone, all the time.... Retreating behind doors is like telling the wolf packs:
Go
on, the city is yours."
On
the subject of crime prevention, television was
less
in evidence than the newspapers, and
its priorities differed significantly
from
those
of the
print
media. Television aired only six sources
who called for harsher penalties, compared to 12 who advocated a greater police presence and 15
who debated the need for runners to change their behavior (12 favored such changes; 3 were
-14-
opposed). Television's contribution to this debate was headed by
WABC,
which aired eight of the
12 calls for more police and 11 of the 15 sources who debated the behavior of runners.
Conclusion
How
did the New
York
media cover the story of "wilding" in
Central
Park?
Our study
uncovered
a schizoid quality to the coverage, a split
between
the flamboyant populist approach of
tabloid
journalism and the concerns of social responsibility. The populist element surfaced in the
use of
colorful
and emotional language; the frequent reports of public outrage, which may feed back
into and intensify the public mood; and the calls for "law and order" measures. At the same time,
there was a continuing effort to defuse
racial
tensions
by denying that
racial
motives or interracial
differences were relevant to the crime.
Although
the
racial
angle played a major role in this story, our content analysis found no
evidence that the coverage played on
racial
fears or hatreds. On the contrary, the question of race
was repeatedly raised in order to deny its relevance to the crime, to warn against reviving
racial
tension, and to
call
for a healing process to defuse any
racial
animosity that might
exist.
The denial
of
racial
relevance was found not only in the
Times
but in the tabloids (including the
Post),
which
pushed the story much harder and in a more emotional vein.
Only
the
Amsterdam News
insisted
on
a
racial
angle, by presenting the crime and its coverage within the framework of white America's
injustices to blacks.
Indeed, one might argue that the media treatment of race cut two ways: they helped diffuse
tensions, yet they may have missed an opportunity to confront the
racial
undertones that well up
in
cases
of interracial violence, even when no overt
racial
motive is present.
WABCs
Jeff
Greenfield
recently argued (July 8) in the
Times
that race
is an
issue
that the political and journalistic establishment cannot or
will
not talk
about... race
seems
to take otherwise intelligent and thoughtful people and strike
them dumb, in both
senses
of that word ... I have heard ... last spring's
Central
Park
terror [linked] to the "poor role models" provided by
Richard
Nixon,
Oliver
North,
Ivan Boesky ... - as if the behavior of
these
public figures counted for a
tenth as much as the culture of remorseless violence that has become an epidemic
in
many black and Hispanic neighborhoods. [Race]
will
either be talked about
openly, honestly ... or it
will
remain underground, poisoning the wellsprings of
discourse, hidden in the whispers within the city's tribes, emerging only in the
form
of
angry denunciations across sealed borders.
Our
study located several other elements, rooted in traditional
news
values, that help account
for
the heavy and emotionally
intense
"play" the story received.
First,
the randomness of such a
brutal
crime fueled public fears. "Stranger crimes" are the most threatening, because they remind
people that they
themselves
(i.e.,
anyone) could have been the victim. A neighbor of one
suspect
put
it bluntly
(April
21) on
WABC:
"It could have been me. It could have been her. It could
have been anybody. If they'll do that person like that they'll do me, same way."
Second,
the youth of the
suspects,
combined with their reported positive personal traits and
stable social backgrounds, flew in the face of
traditional
explanations for such behavior. The "good
kids
go
bad"
story is a variant of the "man
bites
dog" turnabout that
lies
at the core of what makes
news.
This
aspect of the story was strengthened by widespread puzzlement and conflicting opinion
over why
these
kids
"went
bad." The apparent failure of traditional sociological categories to
account for this behavior added an element that was at once tantalizing and disturbing.
-15-
Overlaid
onto an already heightened concern with violent crime, this element also stoked fears
of
a city under
siege
by
criminal
elements, especially violent young males. The apparent
unlikelihood
of
these
particular
youths committing such a crime made the problem and associated
fear
(hence
the
news
value)
seem
much greater.
Third,
the victim's struggle to recover kept the
story alive by providing a daily
news
peg for continuing speculation, condemnations, and political
pronouncements, all duly reported.
The
central
news
value at work was unpredictability
—
the unusual brutality, the apparent
randomness of the crime, the unexpected inability to provide a standard sociological explanation,
and,
finally, the uncertain outcome of the victim's struggle to recover.
The
operation of traditional
news
values must be considered by
those
who would ascribe the
heavy and emotional coverage to more malign forces ranging
from
sensationalism to racism. But
this
does
not absolve the media
from
responsibility for the
news
judgments that shaped their
coverage. The
news
is not a
mirror
on reality but a
prism
whose
refracted images are formed not
only
by
events
but by the choices and perspectives of journalists and
news
organizations.
This
can
be illustrated most clearly by comparing coverage of the same
events
by different outlets. For
example, our content analysis revealed three quite different but internally coherent perspectives in
the
Times,
the
Post,
and the
Amsterdam News.
The
tone
of the
Times's
coverage was cerebral, conceptual, informed by sociological analysis.
A
majority of all "experts" quoted (58 percent) appeared in the
Times.
It also
seemed
aimed at
defusing tie passions aroused by the crime. The
Times
featured by far the
least
coverage among
the daily papers. It also ran the
fewest
stories on the public's reaction to the crime and the victim's
struggle to recover, thereby downplaying the story's empathetic elements. Significantly, the
Times
led
all other
outlets
in one major area - the rejection of race as an explanatory factor. In fact, the
relevance of race was denied in the
pages
of the
Times
at
least
twice as often as anywhere
else.
The
paper also featured only three comparisons to any other
case
of
interracial
violence.
Among
the dailies, the
Times
printed by far the
fewest
calls for increased law-enforcement
efforts, the
fewest
negative descriptions of the attackers, the
fewest
positive descriptions of the
victim,
and
fewest
expressions of adverse public reaction. Alone among the local press, the
Times
treated the crime as a
"normal"
story, a regrettable and troublesome
event,
but one that
carried
the
danger of rousing popular passions that might unleash
racial
hostilities.
The
Post
was the
paradigm
of everything that made the coverage controversial. It
gave
the story
the
full
tabloid treatment, replete with
blaring
headlines, editorial outrage, angry letters, and
impassioned prose. The
Post's
coverage was the heaviest of any outlet - 101
news
items (over
seven
per day on average). It
gave
the most play to public reaction and printed the most calls for
getting tough on crime. It used the most emotional language to describe the crime and the
attackers (averaging over three animal references per day) and to
express
public anger or aversion
(ten times as often as the
Times).
At the same time, the
Post
was second only to the
Times
in
rejecting the relevance of
racial
explanations, and it was second to none in
printing
denials that the
crime
indicted the black community.
Thus
the
Post's
coverage was not racist but populist in tone. A singular feature of the paper's
approach
was its willingness to
print
scores
of letters, many (but not all) agreeing with its editorial
expressions of outrage at violent crime and demands for swift and
severe
punishment. The
Post
seemed
to view itself as the
agent
for expressing public anger over the social breakdown associated
with
urban
crime, even as the
Times
sought to temper popular passions. Hence the
Post's
editorial
endorsement on
April
25 of "the anger sweeping through the city" as "one of the few encouraging
developments to emerge
from
that
obscene
episode."
-16-
The
Amsterdam News
provided an alternative populist perspective on the crime, one that drew
on
black suspicion of calls for "law and order" as implicitly racist. Ironically, that very perspective
made this the outlet most likely to focus on the crime through the prism of
racial
consciousness.
Despite running only one
issue
for every
seven
by the dailies, this weekly paper ran the most
comparisons to previous
instances
of
racial
violence, identified the
suspects*
race more often than
any other outlet, and printed the most charges that the
(white)
media's attention to the
case
was
due to
racial
factors.
The
differences in
these
three newspapers
were
perhaps
best
expressed in the divergent editorial
responses
to calls for a return to the death penalty. A
Post
editorial titled
"Channel
Your
Outrage:
Demand
the Death Penalty" asserted:
The
people of New
York
are no longer willing to be seduced by the claim that
society
is somehow responsible for the behavior of the
marauding
thugs
who terrorize
the city. New
Yorkers
are interested in swift and sure punishment, not in a groping,
pointless search for "root
causes."
The
Times
editorial on May 4 was titled
"Lunging
for Death." It condemned talk of
"primitive
vengeance," endorsed Governor Cuomo's
veto
of earlier capital-punishment legislation, and argued
that "the death penalty would only pander to an ugly mob mood." The
Amsterdam News
ran (May
6) a front-page editorial signed by editor in chief
Wilbur
Tatum
that called for
Mayor
Koch's
resignation:
With
the rape in
Central
Park
of a young white woman, Koch's
vitriol
rose to
another height and set another standard for indecency that trumped
Trump,
in
spades. . . . Quite apart from his lunatic advocacy of the death penalty screeching
so loudly in our ears that we hear "Death Penalty ... for
Blacks,"
we see this now
as Koch's reelection anthem, and
"KILL THEM"
as his flag.
Beyond
such obvious differences in the coverage, the importance of
news
judgment is illustrated
by
the story that no one reports, the angle that is not pursued. A good example is the
absence
of
reporting
on the
Central
Park
rape as a crime against women. Concern over the crime's interracial
aspect,
along with
random
violence or
"wilding,"
established a conceptual framework for the media's
coverage that virtually excluded concerns about gender-based brutality.
It was not until
May
5, over two
weeks
after the crime and long after its
context
was established
in
the public
consciousness,
that this argument appeared in fully developed
form.
In a
Times
op-
ed piece entitled "Rape ~ The Silence Is
Criminal,"
Brooklyn
District Attorney
Elizabeth
Holtzman
argued:
"Explanations that rely on race or clan alone
miss
the key role that gender played: The
jogger was victimized
because
she was a woman, and the boys apparently acted out of a misguided
notion of how to prove their manhood."
Thus
the
choices
that journalists made
were
responsible for the
tone
and focus of the story, in
all
its consistency in
some
areas and diversity in others. The media appeared caught
between
an
apparent desire to act as good citizens and avoid raising volatile social and
racial
issues,
and a
desire to
express
in strong terms their own and the public's anger over a
brutal
crime allegedly
committed by young men who
were
poor and black against a young woman who was well off and
white.
For
the most part the coverage echoed
Mayor
Koch,
as quoted
(April
25) in
Newsday:
The
issue
in this
case
is not semantics, but the savagery of
those
who committed this terrible crime. I
believe this outrageous act should be condemned in the
strongest
possible language...." In
some
-17-
quarlers,
however, using the "strongest possible language" was interpreted as an expression of
racial
hostility.
We
have demonstrated that the media did not overly pander to
racial
feelings
in any of the
several
ways
available to them. We cannot entirely preclude the possibility that a
kind
of shared
code existed whereby journalists and their audiences understood that highly negative references were
appropriate
to black
criminal
suspects,
or that a heightened attention level was warranted by the
charge of a black-on-white sex crime. But that requires an exercise in semiotics rather than content
analysis.
Only
by comparison to other notorious
cases
of both black-on-white and
white־on-black
violence can the inner meaning of the
Central
Park
rape
case
be
assessed
fully and finally.
That
study remains to be undertaken.
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-20-
Table
3
Stories
Offering
a
Framework,
whether Accepted or Rejected,
for
Understanding the Crime
Print
TV
Total
No
framework
170
119 289
Crime of
opportunity
11 8 19
Sexual
motive
6
5
11
Interracial
crime (no
racial
motive)
11 0 11
Wild
youth
8
2 10
Racial
motive 9
0
9
Sick
society
5 0
5
Crime
against
women
3
2
5
Class
motive (poor vs.
rich)
3 0 3
-21-
Table
4
Most
Frequent Explanations
of the
Attack
Order
of
fre-
No. of
quency
Explanation
stories
Total
mentions
1 Race
54
2
Random
act 26
2
Group dynamics
26
4
Youth
culture
25
5
Poverty
22
6
Drug
culture
21
7
Media 20
8
Family
factors
16
9
Gov't
cutbacks
16
10
Social
class
Explanations
affirmed
1
Random
act
25
1 Group dynamics
25
3
Youth
culture
24
4
Media
20
5
Family
factors
14
6
Drug
culture
12
7
Race
11
8
Poverty
10
8
Gov't
cutbacks
10
8
School
failures
10
Explanations
rejected
1 Race
43
2
Poverty
12
3
Drugs
9
4 Gov t
cutbacks
5
5
Social class
2
־22-
Table
5
Impact
of the Crime;
Outcomes
Mentioned
Mentions
Hurt
minorities,
race
relations
29
Harsher response to crime 12
No long-term
effect
3
Suspicion
of teenagers 2
Hurt tourism 2
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Amsterdam
News
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-24-
Table
7
Stories Identifying
Race of
Victim
or
Suspects
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Table
9
Reports on Suspects
1
Prior
Personal
Traits
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Reports
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THE AMERICAN JEWISH COMMITTEE
Institute
of
Human Relations
165 East 56th Street, New York,
NY
10022-2746
September
1989
Single
copy
$2.00
Quantity
on
request
