It examines important questions about how and why certain crimes are reported, and the effect on crime policies and the criminal justice system. The author believes crime reporting by the media is held to a lower standard than other types of news. He traces the impact of tabloid journalism that spread with the appearance of the television program, "A Current Affair," in 1986. He indicates that, while journalists have increasingly focused on trivial sleaze, celebrity scandals, and gruesome but unrepresentative crimes, they have neglected a far more important crime story, the collapse of the criminal justice system as a cost-efficient and equitable deterrent. The author argues that crime trends and crime policies often have little to do with each other and the effect is that Americans are confused and frightened about crime. He shows how tabloid distractions draw journalists away from substantive reporting that could give a more accurate account of crime over the past decade. Instead, stories about a "society under siege" have led to panic about lawlessness and politicians have stepped in with the usual solutions of more arrests, more prisons, and longer sentences. Journalists are challenged to take responsibility for their work and to hold politicians accountable for legislation that does not work in dealing with crime. Notes