Of the 259 youth automatically transferred to adult court from Cook County for a drug crime last year, only one was White. The Houston Police Department initiated a data collection program in August 1999. Some officers say they simply don't fill out the computerized form. The error rate in the 'race' box is at least 19 percent. Officers can choose among 'w' for white, 'b' for black, 'h' for Hispanic, 'a' for Asian and 'n' for Native American, but thousands of records contain blanks and typos.
Officials seem unsure whether they can determine which officers made which stops.
We suggest that a 'misinformation synergy' occurs in crime news that profoundly misinforms the public. The synergy results from the simultaneous and consistent presentation of three significant distortions in print and broadcast news. It is not just that African Americans are overrepresented as criminals and underrepresented as victims, or that young people are overrepresented as criminals, or that violent crime itself is given undue coverage. It is that all three occur together, combining forces to produce a terribly unfair and inaccurate overall image of crime in America. Add to that a majority of readers and viewers who rarely have any personal experience with crime by Black youth, and a White adult population who must rely on the media to tell them that story and we have the perfect recipe for a misinformed public and misguided power structure.