Beyond the Headlines: Tracing the Shifting Depiction of Immigrants and Crime in Local Television News

Abstract

Despite substantial evidence disproving a link between immigration and crime, news media frequently suggest otherwise. As one of the most widely consumed sources of crime information, local television news can play a crucial role in shaping these narratives. While prior research has documented the medium's tendency to overrepresent racial minorities as perpetrators of violent crime, less is known about how immigrants are depicted in local television crime coverage or how these portrayals have evolved amid shifting political discourse on immigration. We conducted a content analysis of a nationally representative sample of local television newscasts of immigrant-involved violent crime aired between 2008 and 2018 to assess how immigrants are portrayed in this coverage. Our findings reveal a persistent pattern of asymmetrical representation where immigrants are depicted as perpetrators nearly three times as often as they are portrayed as victims—a disparity that widened significantly after 2014. Coverage more frequently emphasized the undocumented status and Latin American origin of perpetrators than of victims. The pronounced rise in portrayals of undocumented perpetrators coincided with escalations in anti-immigrant rhetoric that began during the 2016 presidential campaign, suggesting a convergence between media framing and political discourse.

Keywords

news media immigration crime framing local television news

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