Television News, Prejudicial Pretrial Publicity, and the Depiction of Race

The current study is a content analysis that measured the extent of pretrial publicity on Los Angeles television news and examined the relationship of race of the accused and amount of prejudicial information in the news- cast. Results indicated that 19% of the defendants described in crime stories were associated with at least one category of potentially prejudicial information, as defined by the American Bar Association. Blacks and Latinos were twice as likely as Whites to be associated with prejudicial statements on local television news. Latinos who victimized Whites were almost 3 times as likely as White defendants to be associated with prejudicial information. The social, legaI, and psychological implications of these findings are discussed.