Criminal Attacks on Florida Tourists: Another Interpretation

Cecil E. Greek

University of South Florida

1993

In recent months the local, national, and international media have reported a number of stories concerning criminal assaults on Florida tourists. The results of such reporting have indeed been profound: the state legislature has passed new laws limiting juveniles' access to guns and supported the creation of boot camps statewide to handle serious cases of delinquency; the tourist industry has taken significant steps to crime-proof tourists; while grim predictions of large scale reductions in tourism have emerged. Some of these unintended results of media attention may be positive, but surely the latter is not and may prove a fiscal disaster for the state. Reducing the access of guns to juveniles, who are far more likely to either intentionally or accidentally use them than adults, is a positive step. Boot camps, while they will likely prove very effective at controlling juveniles as long as they remain in the program, have not proven to be the long-term answer to reducing repeat criminality when used with young adults. Unfortunately, people return to the very same communities, peers, and families which proved to be crime producing in the past.

However, few have questioned the wisdom or validity of media reporting of Florida tourist attacks. Tourists, a naturally vulnerable group, are sometimes assaulted by criminals, particularly by those robbers who select victims because they appear to be easy targets. This is not a problem unique to Florida, but a potential problem in all tourist meccas. But, are attacks on Florida tourists actually on the rise, making the issue a newsworthy theme? In reality there is no way of knowing, because crime statistics as currently collected do not provide such details about victims. Florida Department of Law Enforcement Uniform Crime Reports do no separate tourist from nontourist victims.

So why have reports of tourists attacks in Florida been reported nation and worldwide. One factor is that Florida law enforcement agencies have now identified such attacks as a problem, and the media has decided to cover the story. As the principal source of the media's information about crime, police identification of a new crime wave will often lead to increased media coverage. To not report on police-identified crime trends risks damaging the symbiotic relationship between the press and the police. Without police cooperation the press' job would be much harder, as they would be forced to uncover crime trends on their own. On the other hand, if the police do not supply reporters with ready made stories, they may turn their investigative eye on the police themselves and uncover cases of corruption, poor training, etc.

However, the police-press relationship alone does not explain the elevation of a local crime problem to international proportions. To understand this one must turn to the facts of the reported cases and demonstrate how they relate to the very core of journalistic priorities and values. Events such as the Miami bump and run incident or the rest stop murder near Tallahassee are newsworthy because they are not commonplace, but "unusual." For journalists the unusual crime incident has certain characteristic features. For example, a crime that involves an innocent victim [foreign tourists are symbolic ambassadors of good will for their countries], and one who takes every precaution to avoid being victimized, is likely to be reported. When combined with an "audacious" attacker(s)--one who is very young or who chases rather than give up when the victim flees--or by someone who should still be in custody but isn't, the story is even more newsworthy. The right combination of unusual elements produces a story of national or international scope.

Finally, the type of cases under discussion offer the media the opportunity to fulfill its literary and ultimately religious role within modern society. The innocent person caught at the wrong place at the wrong time is an oft repeated tale in literature, told most brilliantly by Thornton Wilder in his novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey. However, the constant retelling of this story by the media often causes the public to believe that the unusual is commonplace. The media frequently justifies reporting the unusual as commonplace by stating that, after all, a similar experience might happen to anyone. But, of course, anything came happen to anyone at anytime as part of our precarious existence as human beings. Why is that news? While death itself is the inevitable fate of us all, the media focuses on bad deaths, perhaps to awaken us to our own mortality. Many live life by suspending belief in the inevitability of their own demise. How are we to respond to this constant barrage of reports of untimely death and destruction? Individual and societal response to the message varies: many ignore the message saying it will never happen to them; others surround themselves with police, guns, home security, etc., girding themselves with every possible means of preventing victimization hoping to insure a "good" death; while a few respond by recognizing their own mortality and attempt to live everyday as if it might be their last.

On the other hand, the media may simply be practicing wish fulfillment. What Florida resident, after being stuck in heavy winter traffic or cut off by a lost tourist while driving, hasn't thought of shooting one?

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Copyright 1996 Cecil Greek