Guest essay: Don’t contribute to a climate of fear
Reporting on crime is a favorite pastime of local news. It makes sense: crime impacts the local community, crime lends itself to stories of intrigue and mystery, which draw readers in, and it is easy to report on, as the information is legally required to be publicly available.
However, weekly crime reporting is both unnecessary and irresponsible. It contributes to the false perception that UNC-Chapel Hill’s campus is unsafe, when all data indicate otherwise, and the manner in which this information is reported contributes to the stigmatization of mental illness. We ask that The Daily Tar Heel end its regular campus safety report and instead cover campus safety in a responsible way that accurately portrays the depth and complexity of public safety issues at UNC-CH.
The Daily Tar Heel’s weekly crime reports contribute to a nationwide problem that has made Americans massively overestimate how unsafe their communities are. Research conducted by Michael O’Hear at Marquette University found that, “in comparison with actual crime rates, the news sources disproportionately covered violent crime, and, within the violent-crime category, disproportionately covered homicides.”
The real-world consequences of this sort of media distortion are that people overestimate the amount of crime occurring in their communities and are more likely to fall for appeals to fear or anger and support legislation that addresses problems that do not exist. Research conducted by Belkıs Şahinoğlu, Neriman Saygılı, Ayşe Muhtaroğulları and Aysin Sinal, published in Nature, shows that reporting on crime in small communities can damage social trust, as seen here: “social trust was notably diminished in the aftermath of media reports related to crime, […] individuals reported negative reactions and interactions with their communities. This is regarded as an important influence of media, especially in a small society where news can spread fast and lead to negative reactions.”
Additionally, The Daily Tar Heel has published this information in a manner that increases stigma around mental health. Of the eight crime reports published so far by The Daily Tar Heel, seven of them have included reports of well-being checks, showing location and time range. Well-being and wellness checks at the University are often called to residence halls and frequently concern individual students facing either mental or behavioral health problems, or both. Circulating this information to the entire student body harms students who are already struggling. The Daily Tar Heel should not contribute to a climate of stigmatizing mental health, associating mental health incidents with criminality and prying into the personal lives of fellow students.
Students have a right to know about what is happening on their campus, and the Clery Act and other policies provide mechanisms for that information to be made available. However, the community is not served by having that already-public information pushed into their news feed unnecessarily. We ask that The Daily Tar Heel end its regular campus safety report and cover campus safety issues in a responsible way that accurately portrays the depth and complexity of public safety issues at UNC-Chapel Hill.
— Andrew Gary, class of 2026 in the UNC Gillings School’s Master’s of Public Health; Charlotte Sullivan, class of 2028 in psychology and political science; Cassius Khan, class of 2028 in Media & Journalism and sociology