45% Think Media Coverage Encourages Copycat Killers
Americans tend to believe the media pay too much attention to mass murders and that their coverage prompts others to commit violent crimes.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 44% of American Adults believe the media cover mass murders like the one in southern California too much, while just 13% say they don’t cover them enough. One-in-three (33%) says the level of media coverage is about right. (To see survey question wording, click here.)
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The national survey of 1,000 Adults was conducted on May 30-31, 2014 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Fieldwork for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC . See methodology.
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