Crosshairs on Our Backs: The Culture of Fear and the Production of the D.C. Sniper Story

Abstract

This paper examines the ways in which the DC area sniper story of October 2002 was constructed by the media. Utilizing a grounded approach, we conducted a content analysis of over 500 Washington Post articles published during the attacks. We contend that the newspaper emphasized fear, drama, and feelings of vulnerability in order to heighten the marketability of the narrative. It also constructed a binary rubric under which people were channelled into one of two competing camps. Those who felt vulnerable and reproduced preferred meanings of crime were most commonly cited in the paper. Less fearful voices were given little attention and, when present, were dismissed, marginalized, and rebuked. Such constructions simply reproduce dominant discourses and do little to inform the public. We conclude our article with suggestions for reducing the public’s anxiety from the media’s misrepresentation of crime.

Keywords:

• Crime News
• Fear of Crime
• Media Reporting
• Sniper
• Social Justice
• Washington Post

Notes

[1] While two suspects were ultimately convicted for the attacks, we use the singular, masculine designation to describe the sniper since this was the most common reference used by the press during the course of the shootings.

[2] Maybe this is too strong a statement, considering the recent revelation that Jayson Blair of The New York Times fabricated some of his stories.

[3] For example, some historians suggest that newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst was responsible for starting the Spanish‐American War.

[4] Other examples of high profile crime stories over the past few years include Susan Smith, JonBenet Ramsey, Chandra Levy, and Laci Peterson.

[5] See http://washpost.com/circulation and the Audit Bureau of Circulations’ newspaper rankings at http://www.accessabc.com. Fishman (1978) notes that WP represents a news construction medium that has long influenced news reporting across the nation.

[6] To be sure, we are not suggesting that WP’s framing of the sniper story was copied verbatim by other news organizations or that everything WP offered was original to its organization. We assume that WP was influenced by constructions offered by other news organizations, and that these other organizations did not always shape their stories in the same way as WP. Our goal is not to make comparisons between major media organizations.

[7] An example of an omitted article is an October 4 sports write‐up that refers to Washington Wizards’ basketball star Juan Dixon as a ‘ballhawking sniper’ (p. D4).

[8] While we now know that the sniper shootings began on October 2, according to our ‘sniper’ search the first article pertaining to the attacks did not appear until October 4. In order to be certain that we included all relevant articles, we also conducted a validity check using the word ‘shot.’ We employed this method in order to see if there were articles pertaining to the DC area killings that did not use the word ‘sniper.’ We found only one article connected to the shootings that did not use the word ‘sniper’ in the body of the text. This article appeared on October 3, 2002, on page B2, and runs for only five brief sentences.

Unbeknownst to anyone at the time, however, this incident actually represented the first of 13 victim‐related shootings in the DC area. (The sniper also fired into a Michael’s Craft Store less than an hour before this shooting but no‐one was injured in this incident and it wasn’t until later that a connection was made.) Probably because the shooting was isolated and unexplained, it garnered little media attention at first. The incident was marginalized in the Metro section alongside stories featuring a criminal asphyxiation, a trespassing arrest on the White House perimeter, and attempted abductions. The prominence given to this shooting, however, increased radically when WP reported a connection between it and several other mysterious shootings the next day. On October 4, WP ran a front‐page story announcing that five arbitrary victims had been killed by sniper’s bullets. From that day until the arrest of Malvo and Muhammad, WP employed the ‘sniper’ moniker for all of the articles related to these killings.

[9] Other infamous sniper incidents in the US include: Charles Whitman’s killing of 14 people in Austin, Texas in 1966; Thomas Dillon’s killing of three hunters in Ohio in the late 1980s and early 1990s; and Peter Sylvester’s shooting of three people in Long Island in 1994.

[10] During the shootings it was popularly believed that the sniper was driving a large, white vehicle such as a van or utility truck. However, like most of the assumptions about the shooter, this was incorrect.

[11] One tourism business that caters to school groups reported approximately 200 cancellations (October 19, p. E1).

[12] The poll results showed that 53% of respondents felt anxious or tense because of the sniper; a little fewer than half said the sniper had disrupted their lives; 40% seriously limited their outdoor activities and altered their fuelling practices; a third said they avoided certain stores (October 24, p. A1).

[13] Gilchrist was one of 13 people fired upon by James E. Swann, Jr., between February 23 and April 19, 1993, in two DC area neighborhoods.

[14] There was an odd addition to the media lexicon during this timeframe—the introduction of the phrase ‘non‐sniper related shootings.’

[15] Four other children, also not wearing seatbelts, were seriously injured in the accident.

[16] One of these stories was relegated to the financial section of WP.

[17] One of the authors of this article was asked for an interview by a local news agency doing a story about the sniper.