The media covered the John Henson racial profiling story with fervor. The story of a Milwaukee Bucks player who said he was profiled outside a high-end jewelry store was obviously news.

This got me thinking: To what degree does the local media help form the perceptions that create racial profiling through endless crime scene-framed, fragmented disorder coverage? It’s easy to blame the jewelry store employees, but what creates the perceptions in the first place?

The local media, especially TV, should rethink how they cover crime and disorder. I think they play a role – perhaps subconsciously – in creating the perceptions that drive racial profiling, as well as perceptions of Milwaukee as a whole. This isn’t to insult those in TV; I know a lot of them, and they are, to the one, good people who care about the community. It’s to say you are smart people; put your heads together, and come up with a better way of doing this.

I also don’t mean to generalize all media into one monolithic group. I am talking mostly about local TV. I think newer, niche sites – like the Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service, for one – cover crime much differently and more contextually (ethnic media and WUWM, too).

There is a business interrogatory technique, pioneered by Toyota,  that argues you should ask "why" five times to probe for cause-and-effect when confronted with a problem. I thought of this strategy as I pondered "why" the employees of the high-end Whitefish Bay jewelry store allegedly profiled Henson. Why see Henson and have immediate fear?

There are multiple possible responses, of course (ranging from "they’re racist" to "they erroneously thought his car was stolen" to "look at the crime stats.") Certainly, there is not one "why." However, how the TV media covers crime should also be explored.

These are the areas where TV media could do better, specifically:

• Work harder to consistently balance out disorder coverage (such as "Breaking news: Another person was shot") with other more complex portrayals of African-Americans and other groups in Milwaukee. One example: Madison365's excellent series on the most influential African-Americans in Wisconsin. It shows the stories are out there.

• Work harder to consistently contextualize crime coverage. The coverage is too often fragmented, episodic "scare" coverage that focuses on front-end scenes of disorder. The coverage often lacks institutional memory and historical comparatives. It often focuses on the "what" (another person killed) and too rarely on the "why." It focuses on (sometimes aberrant) monthly or annual crime increases without looking at the longer perspective. Examples of contextual reporting: What’s the average sentence, by judge, in Milwaukee, for a felon in possession of a firearm? What percentage of cases are dismissed? Why does Wisconsin lead the nation in the black incarceration rate some years, and why do so many Midwestern states? WUWM did do an excellent series on the latter, but more could be done. Why is homicide up so much in Milwaukee this year compared to other cities, and how does that compare to the 1990s? Just a few examples. I picked these examples to show how contextualized coverage doesn’t have to follow either "side’s" political paradigms.

• Try not to focus so much on a crime-scene frame, failing to follow-up in court in almost all but the most notorious cases. This affects citizen views of due process by relying on authority perspective mostly and creates citizen fear. It’s also dehumanizing and depersonalized because suspects are often not known yet.

• Work on making news staffs more diverse, including at the daily newspaper. TV might be doing better here. Go look at the staff lists of local media outlets sometime. It’s pretty glaring.

Let me be clear, though: The media is right to report on crime in Milwaukee, including when crime includes black males. That’s news. You can even argue they should look at it even MORE through the prism of race than they do now, by studying "why" black males are disproportionately represented in homicide as victims and suspects.  

In 2013 and 2014, blacks were 80 percent of homicide suspects, according to the Milwaukee Homicide Review Commission. The Commission’s 2015 mid-year report also found that, "the black population makes up 39% of the city’s population but accounted for 81% (60) of the homicide victims and 87% (262) of the shooting victims in the first six months of the year."

That’s just reality (although it brings back up the other question of "why"). Obviously, citizen perceptions are probably driven in part by actual statistics.

However – and this is a big one – most black males are obviously NOT committing homicides. Most are involved in other things that could be covered more and aren’t. For example, did you know that North Division students are competing in a mobile app competition or that Milwaukee is considered a "new Chicago" with a growing and influential rap scene? Did you know there was just a Latino Family Expo? Just a couple examples.

I think it’s an issue of balance and contextualization more than anything. And it matters. The media’s endless crime scene frame coverage – the stereotype "if it bleeds, it leads" – has been shown repeatedly in academic research to distort citizens’ perceptions of race and the amount of crime in their communities.

The screenshot below shows the top stories Saturday afternoon on Channel 6’s website. All crime scene frame, disorder coverage.

Channel 58’s home page was pretty similar. 

The Journal Sentinel’s top stories were mostly about politicians (Ron Johnson, Paul Ryan, John Weishan, etc.) There were some business and sports stories, but less crime emphasis – and a nice contextual piece on voucher schools by Alan Borsuk. There weren’t many stories about black males though, although there was a photo of a black man walking through a library and a good story on voucher schools.

In a class that I teach, called Race and Ethnicity in the Media, I challenge my students to study the local newspaper and one local TV station of their choice. The goal: Find a positive depiction of a black male that is not related to sports or entertainment. I tell them to see whether they can find a depiction of a black or Latino male that falls in between "star" and "criminal." Yes, sometimes you can find stories about black males in government (aldermen, Sheriff Clarke, etc.) and you can find lots of mug shots and stories about criminals (like those guys who allegedly shot Laylah Petersen). But try finding examples of people in between.

Invariably, they are shocked by this assignment. They are shocked because it’s so hard. Semester after semester, students tell me it takes them an hour, and they often have to give up. Occasionally, they luck out and find something. When they do find stories about black males, they are often cast through a prism of social dysfunction (as in, someone at a protest or someone working with a community group to solve poverty). Latino, American-Indian, Arab-American males? Pretty invisible.

Then, I have my students study the Milwaukee Courier or Milwaukee Community Journal, historic black newspapers or the El Conquistador Latino newspaper, which is published in both Spanish and English. They usually write about how many positive stories they find of black or Latinos males (and females) in those outlets, and how the pictures are more likely to show them smiling. So it’s not like the stories aren’t out there; they are.

The top story in the Courier on Saturday was a story on a Fatherhood Summit attended by 1,000 men (there was some other media coverage of that too). I didn’t find a single crime scene/disorder story on the home page of the Courier (except for a piece on Henson). There was a story (by a student of mine) on North Division students competing in a mobile app contest that exemplifies the kinds of stories that are often missing.

What if we were bombarded with constant images of young people like the picture on the left above? How would that alter perception? I see such young people on a daily basis. In my classes. However, some people don’t. Media helps create their reality.

The constant episodic, front-end disorder coverage skews citizen perceptions about the community overall. This affects businesses and institutions too. Since the early 1990s, we’ve seen a steady decline in crime in our communities, including in Milwaukee, but you wouldn’t know it from the news. I remember one summer in about 2006 when the media made it sound like crime was completely out of control, when really that year ended up at about the historic average. The focus on a big annual increase obscured the fact the previous year’s tally had been so comparatively low.

Yes, there’s an upward trend line now that’s very concerning (but "why"?). However, we’re still not near the early 1990s high yet (why was crime worse then?). Take the UWM crime issue as another example. Many people "think" crime is up around UWM (why?). Actually, compared to 2007, it’s way down (why?). The media largely reported these stats after UWM PR handed them out. Why not ask for them earlier?

So "why" does the media report things this way? When it comes to TV, I think it’s often logistical. It’s cheaper and faster to dash down to the latest crime scene, and it produces inherently dramatic imagery. It takes time to cover courts – to get cameras into courtrooms and so forth. You might find more crime coverage on weekends, when less news is available to fill the time. Shrinking resources have made it tougher to cover crime contextually (that takes time too). Competition with online and social media has increased pressure to get it fast. Still, how about forgoing some of the generic crime scene stuff in favor of teams of reporters who could do it deeper and better?

This all does matter. There’s a lot of academic research that shows focusing on a crime-scene frame can distort public perception of crime. For my master’s thesis, I covered television and print news coverage of homicide in Milwaukee, and I found a heavy emphasis on the crime scene frame here.

Academic research has repeatedly documented how the media fills their news with crime coverage, and it has found that television relies on crime stories proportionately more than newspapers. One study found violent crime filled one-third of all local television news programming and that the news media focus disproportionately on homicide.  

Academic research has also found that the news media consistently overemphasize black suspects in crime news. News coverage of crime increases fear among viewers, often disproportionate to reality. It also prompts prosecutors to negotiate less, promotes racial stereotypes and increases support for tougher law enforcement measures.

Some researchers have found that local news stories about homicide had the strongest effect on raising fear in the audience and noted that homicide stories "show by far the strongest relationship to fear." One team of researchers found "a mere five-second exposure to a mug shot of African-American or Hispanic youth offenders in a 15-minute newscast" raised levels of fear among viewers, increased backing of "get tough" crime policies and stimulated racial stereotyping.

The stories are out there. It’s time the media – especially TV media – rethink how they cover crime. We can do better.