News reflects views: An analysis of media and the perpetuation of the invisibility of black women as victims of homicide in three major city newspapers

Numerous studies have been conducted regarding perceived bias in newspapers' reporting of violent crimes against victims of particular racial categories. Yet few studies have focused specifically on the intersections of race and gender in determining the extent and prominence of this coverage, and more specifically how the lack of attention to violence against women of color reinforces their invisibility in the social structure. An exploratory content analysis of three major newspapers (the Atlanta Journal -- Constitution, Detroit Free Press, and the Washington Post) was conducted to assess the differences in the reporting of homicides of women across race, focusing specifically on White and African-American females. Descriptive statistics including cross tabulations, in addition to independent sample t-tests, OLAP cubes, classification trees, neural networks and categorical regression analysis were generated to test the following hypotheses: H01: White victims of homicide will be overrepresented in newspaper articles compared with other female victims of color and in contrast to yearly statistics on homicide for the same groups in FBI Uniform Crime Reports (UCR); H0 2: Articles featuring white female victims of homicides will yield a greater frequency of story framing indicators compared with Black or Hispanic-non-White female homicide victims and that this difference will be statistically significant across racial groups; H0 3: Prominence as indicated by location of story within the newspaper and the length of the article (word count) will differ significantly across race; H0 4: The race and gender of the reporter will impact the story framing of articles on Black and White female homicide victims; and H05: Various story framing indicators and word count can be used to predict the race of the victim in articles (the victim is more likely to be White when there is a presence of certain story framing indicators, the story is located in a prominent part of the newspaper, and the article length (word count) is greater compared to Black victims Findings from this research suggest that there is an overrepresentation of White female victims of homicide in newspapers when contrasted with actual FBI Uniform Crime Report statistics; White female homicide victims are more likely than Black females to receive prominent news coverage as indicated by location of article in the newspaper and word count; race and gender of the reporter has an impact on the story framing of homicides; greater racial diversity among reporting staff has a diminishing affect on racially biased reporting; and the variables of location of story in the paper, word count, and the marital status of the victim are reliable predictors of the race of the victim. It is anticipated that the findings of this study will contribute to a body of literature that delineates the power of media in the social construction of victimization through its influence on societal attitudes and concern about particular crime victims, and moreover elucidates the social problem of inequality inherent in the existing social structure.