Data were gathered through a content analysis of crime news in three newspapers of widely differing sizes (the Chicago Tribune, the Indianapolis Star, and the Lebanon, New Hampshire Valley News) for the entire year of 1976; interviews with panels of voters in Evanston, Ill., metropolitan Indianapolis, and Lebanon, N. H.; and the Uniform Crime Reports for each city. The findings revealed that fear of crime was associated more strongly with newspaper emphasis on violent crime than with the actual frequency of violent crime in a community. In addition, the evidence suggests that both newspaper emphasis on crime and people's fear of crime were correlated more closely with the occurrence of violent crime than with the occurrence of crimes in general in a community. The findings are suggestive only, because the study was limited in the populations examined and the analysis concerned only newpaper reports of crime. However, they raise questions about the methods of presentation used by newspapers in reporting local criminal activity -- specifically, whether crime news is reported dispassionately to provide readers with a meaningful understanding of events and their policy implications or whether crime news is used to shock, shame, or titillate the readers. Fifteen references are provided; two tables are included.