A study was conducted to investigate whether readers of newspapers that carry large amounts of crime news have a greater fear of being victims of crime than do readers of newspapers that place less emphasis on crime coverage. Data were gathered through a content analysis of crime news in three newspapers of widely differing circulation, interviews with panels of voters in three cities of differing sizes, and the Uniform Crime Reports published by the Federal Bureau of Investigation for each city. The findings revealed that fear of crime was associated more strongly with newspaper emphasis on violent crime than with the actual frequency of violent crime in a community. In addition, the evidence suggested that both newspaper emphasis on crime and people's fear of crime were correlated more closely with the occurrence of violent crimes than with the occurrence of crimes in general in a community. (Author/FL)