REPORTING ON VIOLENCE, a handbook for journalists

A GUIDE TO THIS BOOK

"If [violence] is not a public health problem, why are all those people dying from it?"

In 1977, a group of physicians in the U.S. Public Health Service met to draw up a list of the 12 most important steps to prevent deaths in the United States. Instead of looking only at the leading causes of death, they considered the leading causes of premature death - before age 65. At that time, the top five included violent injuries, homicide and suicide. The research also revealed that violence rates were rising rapidly, particularly among the young.

homicides per 100,000 population

Years of pontential life lost before age 65 per 100,000 population under 65 years of age
United States, 1993

National Center for Health Statistics, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Vital Statistics of the United States, Vol. II, Mortality, part A, for data years 1970-1993

Out of this meeting emerged a new development: a medical and scientific specialty that tracks violence as an epidemic. Specialists in this new discipline put violence in the same category and apply the same scientific tools as those that are being used to reduce and control other epidemics, such as lung cancer and heart disease. They use a public health model that studies the interaction among the host, or person who is injured or killed, the agent of injury or death, and the environment in which that injury or death takes place. They define risk factors, then develop and evaluate methods to prevent violent incidents.

Few would deny that violence in the United States is epidemic. The country ranks first among industrialized nations in its rate of violent deaths. More children die from violence than from disease. Homicide and suicide account for more than one-third of the country's annual 145,000 traumatic deaths, which include car crashes, boating incidents and plane crashes. Although national firearm death rates decreased in 1994 and 1995, more Americans die from gunshots than car crashes in California, the District of Columbia and eight other states.

Violence prevention proponents note that the challenge to change attitudes toward violence - to convince Americans that violence is predictable and preventable - is no different from the attitudes public health experts faced when they suggested in the 1950s that stopping smoking would reduce lung cancer rates and in the 1960s that wearing seat belts and not driving under the influence of alcohol would reduce automobile deaths and injuries.

For example, until the 1960s, traffic deaths and injuries were typically blamed on "the nut behind the wheel." Prevention approaches were limited to admonitions to drive safely. Then, public health experts, law enforcement agencies, transportation departments, injury control scientists, consumer advocates, public policy makers and vehicle manufacturers began looking at auto deaths and injuries as a public health issue. Instead of studying only how the human factor contributed to crashes, they also investigated the vehicle and the environment. In 1975, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration began accumulating information through its Fatal Accident Reporting System (FARS). FARS uses police records and death certificates to accumulate data on the driver (age, sex, blood alcohol level, if wearing seatbelt), the vehicle (vehicle identification number that reveals make, manufacturer and product characteristics) and the environment (weather, location and roadway conditions). To recommend specific safety improvements, researchers used FARS data to identify unsafe conditions in driver behavior, vehicles and the environment.

As a result, over the last 30 years and often amid great controversy, car manufacturers added collapsible steering columns, seat belts, shoulder harnesses, roll bars, padded dashboards, anti-lock braking systems, airbags and safety glass to the vehicles they made. States passed laws requiring seat belts for all riders and car seats for young children, and they created stiff penalties for people driving under the influence of alcohol. Highway engineers improved the safety of roadways and intersections. If the death rate from auto crashes had remained the same as it was 30 years ago, an estimated 80,000 to 100,000 people would be dying annually on the nation's highways compared with the 40,000 who now die in highway crashes.

When public health researchers began identifying the risk factors that contribute to auto crashes, journalists began reporting breaking news of traffic injuries and fatalities differently. They began including the type of car and its manufacturer, whether people were driving drunk or wearing seatbelts, the conditions of the road or intersection, and whether stop lights were functioning or stop signs were in place. Feature articles focused on automobile safety design, laws to prevent drinking and driving, recalls to correct safety problems and court cases that addressed auto safety issues.

Similarly, since the 1980s, hundreds of national, state and local violence prevention research projects and programs have emerged. Physicians, public health experts, epidemiologists and social scientists are using the public health model to study violence. They analyze the relationship among the person who is killed or injured, the weapon and the physical, economic and social environments in which violence occurs. In 1983, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention initiated a program to study the causes of violence and founded the Center for Injury Control and Prevention. In 1984, U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop declared that violence was as much a public health issue for today's physicians as smallpox was for the medical community in previous generations. In 1988, Deborah Prothrow-Stith, now an assistant dean at the Harvard School of Public Health, established in Massachusetts the first office of violence prevention in a state department of public health. Schools of public health at universities across the nation are pursuing epidemiological research into risk factors such as access to firearms and alcohol use.

Identifying the risk factors of violence is a complex undertaking. There are many different types of violence - violence in which women, children, the elderly and men are injured and killed in their homes by family members; gang violence; dating violence; violence by acquaintances; violence by strangers; etc. Risk factors vary with different types of violence and often from community to community. Some of the risk factors that have been identified as contributing to high levels of the many types of violence include: poverty, racial segregation and discrimination, unemployment, the ready availability of alcohol, the ready availability of firearms, the portrayal of violence in the media, being male, being young, a lack of education in child rearing, childhood exposure to lead, abuse as a child, witnessing violent acts in the home or neighborhood, the belief in male dominance over females and isolation of the nuclear family.

Violence is a difficult epidemic to understand and control because no one factor - elimination or redesign of guns, decrease in availability of alcohol or reduction of media violence - will prevent all violence. Each type of violence in a particular community results from a unique combination of social, cultural, biological and economic risk factors and thus requires a unique combination of preventive measures. Therefore, prevention approaches must involve a unique combination of people who attempt to solve the problem: doctors, researchers, community organizers, lawmakers, police officers, judges, social workers, teachers, parents and citizens.

Traditionally, journalists have reported violent incidents as only a law enforcement and criminal justice issue. But now that an epidemiological approach to violence has been established, the media can expand their reporting of violence - in breaking news as well as features - to identify factors that contribute to violence.

Breaking news of violent incidents ordinarily includes information about the victim, the alleged assailant, the weapon and the immediate circumstances of the incident. With the ready availability of data, articles about violent incidents can

• be put into perspective to answer the question: How common is this crime in this community?
• include information about identified risk factors. What is the relationship of the people involved - are they friends, family, acquaintances or strangers? Were those involved in a violent incident drinking alcohol? How many alcohol outlets exist in that community? Is the incidence of crime higher in areas of the community that have a high density of alcohol outlets? Do the people involved in the violent incident have jobs? If a gun was involved, what type is it? Who is the manufacturer? Where was it obtained? How much did it cost?
• address the consequences and costs to families and society of this violent incident. How much does hospitalization cost and who pays for it? Did the children of the victim or perpetrator witness the violent incident and are they receiving counseling? What happens to the families of the people involved as a result of this incident? Will they lose their homes, be forced to move or go on welfare? Will the children have to change schools, be split up among relatives or be put into foster care?

Feature articles can focus on types of violence in the community and what community groups are doing - or not doing - to decrease violence. If community groups are not doing anything, reporters can find a similar community that is incorporating prevention strategies to reduce violent incidents. Thousands of organizations across the United States have taken action to reduce all types of violence in their towns and cities, with varying degrees of success. This briefing book comprises four sections. The first presents newspaper articles exemplifying the traditional way of reporting incidents of violence and rewrites of those articles that incorporate information based on current research as well as the consequences of the violent incidents. The second section highlights different types of violence and provides basic information and primary resources to obtain updates and further information. To show the range of research, prevention approaches and the effort required to avert violence, the third section offers several case studies in which communities have applied prevention strategies. The last section lists resources for basic data, research and advocacy groups.

This briefing book is not a blueprint but a guide. It does not provide a complete list of resources or all the different ways a story can be told using the new information, but it does provide a new and necessary perspective on reporting violent incidents. National and state figures provide an overall perspective of trends of violent incidents, but each community has its own unique problems. It is the responsibility of journalists in each community to identify specific problems of violence and prevention strategies that people in that community are taking.

I developed this approach over several years of thinking and reporting about violence from a science journalist's perspective. I believe that with the current wealth of available epidemiological data and with the prevention strategies that are being implemented daily in this country, our traditional methods of reporting crime and violence are now archaic and, more important, irresponsible to our readers.

Our readers derive their picture of the world from what we present to them. The old way of reporting violence provides only enough information to increase the fear of violence and a fatalistic attitude toward preventing it. This new method of reporting violence gives people in our communities enough information to make changes, if they wish - to prevent violence by changing their behavior, by demanding changes in how businesses make and sell their products, and by influencing their governments to institute and enforce violence prevention measures.

Jane Ellen Stevens
Davis, California 1997