By Elaine Hennig and Benjamin Greaves
Since Harris County’s misdemeanor bond system was first declared unconstitutional by a federal district court in 2017, the county has implemented several reforms as part of the resulting settlement. Before the resolution of the lawsuit, indigent defendants were detained pretrial solely based on their inability to pay bond, while their wealthier counterparts could post bond and expect prompt release. The county corrected this wealth-based discrimination by requiring the majority of misdemeanor defendants to be released on personal recognizance (PR) bonds, which do not require an upfront cash payment. By providing defendants with a new system for bonding out of jail that does not discriminate based on income, the implemented reforms ensure that defendants are not prematurely punished with jail time— upholding the principle of a ‘presumption of innocence’ for the criminally accused, and preventing taxpayers from footing the bill for unnecessary weeks or months of incarceration. Though these changes have only been applied to misdemeanor cases, several ongoing lawsuits have set the stage for reforms that could similarly improve the felony bond system. While these two systems are legally different, the rationale for reform remains the same: protecting constitutionally guaranteed rights and preventing wealth-based discrimination. Despite the more equitable reforms to Harris County’s misdemeanor system, opponents of bond reform frequently criticize the changes. Though many opponents still claim to support the principles of reform, they regularly scapegoat bond reform for the various failures of the criminal legal system. Through the use of misinformation, propagation of false narratives, and exploitation of race-based disparities, they portray bond reform as a threat to public safety. Unfortunately, this disinformation effort is facilitated by local media outlets, who amplify the voices of opponents and disseminate the narratives they promote. This report aims to examine media coverage of bond in Harris County, and to better understand the media’s role in shaping the narrative of bond reform. It draws on a content analysis of 226 news articles run by six Houston-area television stations between January 2015 and June 2021. Stories qualified for selection if they discussed bond reform, bond debates, and/or people who allegedly committed crimes while out on bond. While bias in coverage was the primary focus of this analysis, we also reviewed 15 other key variables, such as referenced ‘experts’ and the defendant’s race or ethnicity. This analysis reveals that many local media stations disproportionately publish biased articles in their reporting on bond. The media consistently provide a platform for opponents of bond reform to represent bond release as a threat to public safety, while frequently failing to contextualize opponents’ claims or feature an alternative view. In cherry-picking and sensationalizing stories about defendants who are arrested while out on bond, media outlets construct a distorted narrative of dangerous releasees, in effect exaggerating the risks of bond reform and minimizing its positive impact. These efforts continually undermine bond reform, serving only to generate fear of people released on bond pretrial. The shift in news coverage of bond is perhaps best seen through a comparison of coverage prior to and following the implementation of Harris County’s proposed settlement in 2019. Over the 48-month period from January 1, 2015, to December 31, 2018, 42 total articles focused on bond in relation to reform or released defendants. Of those articles, only 33 percent were found to be negatively biased. In contrast, over a shorter 30-month period from January 1, 2019, to June 30, 2021, not only did the number of bond-focused articles more than quadruple to 184, but the percentage of negatively biased articles nearly doubled to 61. Although bias in media coverage is one of the most—if not the most—alarming variables analyzed in this report, several other variables have revealed similarly concerning trends. With ongoing attacks against bond reform efforts in Texas and in Houston specifically, recognizing and correcting these trends in media coverage is critical to ensuring that Harris County residents have a more informed perspective of both misdemeanor bond reform and bond reform more generally.
Austin: TEXAS CENTER FOR JUSTICE AND EQUITY, 2021. 34p.
