More and more often in this country we hear complaints about media sensationalizing every news story. Often the gripes are warranted. The Aaron Hernandez story and subsequent NFL crime stories are helpful in making that case.
Murder charges for New England Patriot tight end Aaron Hernandez triggered media focus on a perceived NFL crime wave including calls for NFL commissioner Roger Goodell to do something. But the perception of a “crime wave” is now accepted as reality and is based in assertions lacking research and proper, fair context.
While we should hope that the NFL would have no players ever get arrested, let’s be realistic. Name an industry in this country that has never had anyone arrested. Let us also be mindful that arrests do not equal guilt.
Arrests do not equal guilt. Investigate the story of The Central Park Five, or Ruben Hurricane Carter or Penn State’s Rashard Casey. All of them were accused, arrested, charged and later found to have been innocent. The Central Park Five and Rubin Carter served years in prison they will never get back.
For many in society and in the media we equate arrests to guilt long before trial. But that is another column for another day.
This column’s focus is about fairly placing stories in proper context. This is not a defense of anyone’s alleged wrongdoing; it is about what we should expect from our media coverage.
I have, like many others, read accounts of the Hernandez story and the NFL crime stories that followed. With a murder charge leading the news, people tabulated all the NFL players arrested this year. Many of them are incidents that occur every day; public drunkenness, D.U.I., or driving without a license. Some are violent crimes.
The big number being thrown out is 28—as in “TWENTY-EIGHT NFL Players Have Been Arrested this Year.” That number grabs attention and readers. In March 2011 Sports Illustrated published another dramatic story, this one on a college football crime wave threatening the safety of college campuses. They cited this finding; 7% of players on the rosters of Top 25 College Football teams had an arrest record (60% of those charged had subsequently pleaded guilty or paid a fine or were found guilty).
Twenty-eight NFL players arrested in half a year, or 7% of college football players with arrest records seem to be big numbers creating the aura of a serious problem. By themselves those statistics are made to seem bad by implying they are big numbers. But there is no “control group” to compare them too. That is basic science.
A little research matching those numbers with a “control group” presents a much different result.
Let’s start with the NFL. Including practice-squad players and injured reserve players, in-season NFL rosters carry around 55 players on 32 teams for a total of 1,760 NFL players. Twenty-eight of 1,760 players have been arrested for an arrest rate of 1.6%. That may seem high.
Let’s take a look at the rest of society. According to the 2010 U.S. Census there are over 41 million men in this country in the same age range as the NFL players. Last year roughly 4.275 million arrests were made of NFL-aged men for a rate of … 10.39%. Since we are only halfway through 2013 even doubling the NFL number to 56 players for a rate of 3.2% — is still well less than a third of the rate for their societal peer group.
If the headline had been “NFL Players Arrest Rates are Less than 1/3 of Peer Group” who is going to read that story? But that is the proper context.
In the 2011 article let’s compare the “high” 7% arrest rate for College Football players to society. Using federal census and crime data we find 11,014,176 college-aged men of which 2,069,702 had been arrested in 2011; a rate of 18.8%. The rate in the article cited any arrest in a player’s entire life, not just in that calendar year, so even my yearly-rate comparison is slightly skewed against college football players.
But the headline could have been “Despite Perceptions: College Football Players Much Less Likely To Be Arrested Than Their Peers.”
But that wouldn’t sell magazines. Sensationalized stand-alone numbers spur media consumers to read on. Numbers substantially better than the population at large are a dull story.
The research numbers I used were easy to find, meaning someone was either too lazy or had an agenda-driven story already in mind before they published it.
Attaching your article to the big story is an easy way to attract attention. In the Aaron Hernandez case the ACLU complained about his solitary confinement. In a blog they mention 80,000 cases of solitary confinement a year but only the ACLU’s comments on the Hernandez’s solitary confinement made national headlines.
Journalists or columnists attach what they write to the big name or the big story so they show up in internet searches or Google alerts. I’m just as guilty. After all, this column mentions the NFL, College Football, Aaron Hernandez, Roger Goodell and the ACLU so it will pop up on alerts luring more readers to get my point across.
Puts the whole thing in context I guess.
