A serendipitous finding of a news media history effect: A research note

On January 16, 1989, a Hispanic Miami police officer shot and killed a black motorcyclist in a predominantly black section of Miami. During the following week, the shooting and its aftermath received extensive newspaper, television, and radio coverage. In criminal justice research, history effects are a common concern but empirical demonstrations are rarely reported. As part of a larger study of police recruits' training and attitudes, the news coverage of this shooting was discovered to have influenced the attitudes of Hispanic recruits: it significantly altered their expectation that police officers would use their weapons while on duty. This effect was not observed in non-Hispanic recruits. This serendipitous finding points to the need for researchers to be alert to threats to validity, particularly as the mass media become more pervasive and more intrusive. Further, it empirically demonstrates the social construction of reality in operation.