NEWS MEDIA

Sentencing Project -   A detailed analysis of news coverage at six media outlets in the Baltimore area during the first half of 2024 finds that they have been providing their audiences with skewed and misleading information about youth crime. Problematic coverage has been more frequent at the four local TV news stations analyzed than the two newspapers reviewed and especially prevalent on one local station, WBFF Fox45.

For decades media scholars have noted that local news coverage is often sensationalized and framed in ways that heighten public fears of youthful offending. And this tendency has continued since the outset of the pandemic. This coverage has likely contributed to a shift in public opinion toward tough-sounding policies that conflict with the evidence on what works to reduce youth crime and promote youth success. Indeed, problematic coverage appears to have been a factor behind the bipartisan passage of a juvenile justice bill in Maryland in April 2024 that rolled back evidence-based reforms enacted only two years earlier. The new law imposes harsher responses on youth that are not grounded in research and that are likely to worsen crime, damage young people’s futures, and exacerbate the Maryland youth justice system’s already severe racial and ethnic disparities.

Specifically, this analysis of local news coverage in Baltimore reveals:

• Disproportionate focus on crimes committed by youth. All six local media outlets in Baltimore, but especially TV news stations (and particularly Fox45), highlighted crimes by young people far out of proportion with their arrest rates.
• Misleading representation of youth crime trends. Whereas the available data on youth offending rates in Baltimore show a mix of trends, most of them favorable, all six local media outlets repeatedly asserted a recent spike in youth crime and violence.
• Failure to support assertions of rising youth crime rates with accurate and representative statistics. All six of the news outlets often made or echoed claims about rising youth offending rates either without providing statistical evidence, or – when they did offer statistics – doing so in problematic ways.
• Widespread use of fear-inducing rhetoric about youth crime. All six outlets published stories that included rhetoric suggesting that youth crime in Baltimore was rampant or out of control.
• Fox45, relative to other news outlets, was much more likely to air sensationalized coverage highlighting youth crime incidents and perceived leniency in the justice system. Each of the problems described above were an order of magnitude more intense on Fox45. On that station, viewers were presented with a steady stream of often lengthy stories offering graphic footage of youth crime incidents as well as sharp and fearinducing rhetoric from select victims, witnesses, experts, and community residents.

Political Wire -  The Washington Post is expected to lay off dozens of staffers this week, Status reports. “The layoffs will surely deplete morale further inside the beleaguered newspaper, which has suffered a talent exodus over the last several weeks.”

Hamilton Plan - In the past few months, the billionaire owners of both the LA Times and the Washington Post quashed anti-Trump presidential endorsements. In LA, Patrick Soon-Shiong has made it clear he intends to meddle in, at least, the opinion section to make it more right wing. Jeff Bezos must be a bit more circumspect with the Washington Post because of its institutional heft, but it is equally clear that he has concluded that nothing about his newspaper is worth pissing off Trump, who could retaliate against Bezos’ other, real business...

America’s basic problem is that we have an economic system that concentrates great wealth in few hands and we have a political system in which money is allowed to buy political power in a straightforward way and now, on top of that, we have a President who fully embraces—who lives for—the opportunity to make the world bow to him by exploiting those systems. It’s a bit surreal watching this all unfold right in front of us. This is the script of imperial downfall, of a mighty nation that has been teeing itself up to crumble by having no moral scruples finally jumping onto the garbage chute with both feet. Watching all of the highly respected CEOs of America’s most powerful and respectable and, according to a widespread characterization, “liberal” companies donate millions of dollars to the Trump inauguration, unalloyed bribes paid for political protection, is just—it’s not subtle. Detecting the grand direction of America has never required less insight. I mean, 40 years ago, looking at Carter and Reagan deregulate industries and cut taxes, watching union power slowly decline, watching the public’s embrace of celebrity over substance, if you looked ahead and said, “Hey, over the next few decades, this is really going to eat away our shared prosperity and cause an inequality crisis that will ultimately obliterate the very legitimacy of America’s leading institutions”—well, that would be a canny call. That would require some real analytical foresight. But analyzing what is happening right now requires nothing but the ability to describe events accurately without succumbing to delusion. We have a dozen people in this country who are worth more than $100 billion each and the richest one of all has teamed up with a gutter con man to buy the White House and now everyone who does not kiss the ring will be targeted for retaliation. This is the final form of unregulated capitalism, where fantastically rich and often childlike titans run the world’s most powerful nation for their own pleasure, and what was once thought of as “civil society” cowers in the corner in an effort to avoid provoking the beast. Here we are! Enjoy this spectacle! The past half century has been leading up to this!