In general, crime is a topic that attracts attention of the mass media and their audience. Mass media, especially private television stations, report on crime in several different formats. In-terestingly, the majority of the population believes that crime figures highly increased during the last 10 years - which cannot be confirmed according to official crime statistics, suggest-ing in contrast, that overall crime has decreased. At the same time, the proportion of people who are in favour of tougher sentencing has increased.
In the empirical analysis it will be shown that crime topics are more prevalent in news broad-casted by private TV stations. Following from this, persons who tend to use private TV sta-tions, erroneously assume more often that crime had highly increased during the last 10 years. This bias in public perception of crime has consequences, since persons who believe in a high increase in crime do also tend to have more punitive sentencing attitudes - which could have consequences for future crime policies.