Although the juvenile arrest rate has declined in the last few years, public awareness of juvenile crime has not diminished. This study examined acts of school violence committed by juveniles in three rural school districts and analyzed how newspapers presented these acts compared to similar acts committed by juveniles in urban school settings. The study examined the Louisville Courier Journal, Wall Street Journal, St. Louis Post Dispatch, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, and New York Times. It scrutinized not only the language of the article but also its title, location in the newspaper, and the number of words, lines, paragraphs, and pictures used in the article, in an attempt to determine whether newspapers present misleading views of school violence. The study concluded that the newspapers did present school violence in rural and urban settings very differently and these differences were reflected in the way the political system reacted to such incidents. The study found that: (1) the newspapers were much less likely to print stories about shootings in urban school systems, even though they occurred at a higher rate than in rural schools; (2) the media projected subliminal messages regarding who was committing these crimes; and (3) the victim's gender affected how the media transmitted information. Notes, tables, references