One common theme that was seen in the mainstream media’s coverage of national events leading up to the midterm elections was a frequent absence of any reports on spiraling crime rates in most of America’s larger cities. The only shootings that were reliably covered were those conducted by white people who could be portrayed as “domestic terrorists influenced by the mega-MAGA Republicans.” Other big stories about crime were either ignored entirely or written off as GOP “hyperbole” when things were allegedly going just fine. But now, with the election safely behind us and the damage to the media’s Democratic Party masters minimized, a few of them appear to be daring to mention the forbidden subject. At Fox News, Dan Gainor offers a few examples of MSM coverage of the crime crisis, along with some holdouts who continue to insist that the nation’s cities are just as “safe” as they’ve always been.
Crime is out of control. Not just in our cities but in our news media. Journalists lost control of the narrative before, during, and after the election. They are furious that social media allows voters to see attacks on citizens, hate crimes and huge mobs robbing stores.
The legacy press tried to suppress the crime narrative leading up to Election Day. Then just 19 days after the vote, The Washington Post admitted, “During the last three years, homicides nationwide have reached their highest levels in decades.”
That should have resulted in a come to Mencken moment for the political press. Instead, they either ignored it or tried to rationalize it.
Seeing the Washington Post admit something about the highest murder rates in decades was a real eye-opener. But even after the article ran, Dan reminds us that Philip Bump felt compelled to publish a rebuttal of sorts, under the title, “The overblown, heavily political fear of American cities.” But even then, he was forced to open up the piece with the phrase, “Yes, crime has risen in cities — and elsewhere — over the past few years.”
Other outlets also published some crime statistics while gamely trying to explain them away. As Gainor recounts, the Atlantic published a piece close to the election summoning up the last set of FBI crime data, describing crime rates as being “mostly flat” last year. It’s only later in the article that you learn that the “flatness” in question was the result of a drop in burglaries “offsetting” an increase in homicides. Because, you know… more people being gunned down is no biggie if fewer people had their homes broken into.
More than anything else, cable news hosts, particularly on CNN and MSNBC, seemed outraged that people were actually talking about crime, particularly so close to an election. Both networks blasted Tucker Carlson for playing security camera footage of a woman in Chicago being brutally beaten and robbed right outside of her own home. It’s as if Carlson was the bad actor for revealing the crime rather than the young thugs who bloodied the woman’s face and stole her belongings while she screamed for help that never arrived.
The reason for all of this media malfeasance should be obvious by now. If the MSM covers the crippling increases in violent crime, then the story becomes real for their audience. And if those trends are confirmed, it speaks poorly of the governance of the Democrats who have controlled all public policy for nearly two years. And we can’t have that now, can we?
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