Zero Tolerance For Zero Knowledge
The heart-wrenching images of communities ravaged by school shootings are seared into our national consciousness. Fears of contagion and a perceived worsening of the school violence problem are crippling outcomes. After the shootings on the Red Lake Indian Reservation in Minnesota this past spring, a Gallup/CNN poll reported that close to three-quarters of the American public believed such school shootings were likely to happen in their communities, and 60 percent did not think those tragic events could be prevented.
Given the billions of dollars spent nationally on school safety and violence-prevention measures since the Columbine High School shootings in 1999, the profound influence of such events on the nation’s confidence is notable. The irony becomes more pronounced when one considers that public perceptions of failure in this area are occurring at a time of historic reductions in school violence. During the past 12 years, school crimes as a whole have dropped by approximately two-thirds. Theft and violent crimes on school grounds have declined by about 50 percent. Even serious violent crimes on school grounds, comparatively low to begin with, have shown reductions. (The statistics are contained in the U.S. Departments of Education and Justice’s "Indicators of School Crime and Safety: 2004." )
What explains this mismatch in public perception vs. reality? For starters, there is a pervasive lack of information available to the general public. Most citizens are not aware of the massive reductions in school violence. Media reporting plays a large role in this dynamic. As researchers, we regularly hear reporters say that these historic reductions are not “newsworthy” or “interesting” to the general public. Recently, one reporter explained off the record that “we don’t report when planes land safely.” Having heard such arguments over many years, we suspect they are common in the news industry. But we urge the media to actively report the improving trends. Increased coverage of successful violence-prevention efforts would reflect the national reality in...
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