Process
Status Items Output None Questions None Claims None Highlights Done See section below
Document Notes
Power of journalism to dictate what people think, and how policies and governments react. If you just let the corps say what they want without analysis, that’s irresponsible.
Highlights
id760468205
the news has been full of horror stories about shoplifting. To hear some people tell it, you’d think petty theft was a crisis of apocalyptic proportions. In the New York Post, for instance, we read that shoplifting is an “epidemic taking over America.” The Financial Times issues dire warnings of “surging shopping crime,” while Fox News insists that “the shoplifting crisis is a nightmare.” ABC’s Nightline airs scary-looking footage of what its hosts call “brazen smash-and-grabs”: people in masks breaking store windows, grabbing armloads of clothing, and running off.
id760468215
resurgence in “tough-on-crime” tactics, both from corporations and political leaders. In department stores like Target, customers are confronted by elaborate new security measures, with everything from toothpaste to frozen pizza locked behind glass. Rite Aid pharmacies have turned to facial-recognition software to guard their merchandise, only to discover that their computers falsely identify people as “likely shoplifters”—particularly if those people have dark skin. In New York City, Mayor Eric Adams has launched an entire police task force dedicated to retail theft
id760468229
shoplifting has actually decreased in 17 of the 24 cities surveyed, and is now fairly rare, with just 38.6 reported incidents per 100,000 people. In June 2019, that number was 45.1. Shoplifting might be happening more often in New York City specifically, but an “epidemic taking over America,” it isn’t.
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“events in New York tend to receive outsize scrutiny,” even if they aren’t relevant to the rest of the country, since so many media outlets are based there.
✏️ Reason 1 for why this is happening 🔗 View Highlight
id760468351
“outlandish anecdotes” about crime are popular on social media, with footage of “looting flash mobs or thieves ramming cars into stores” likely to go viral and give the impression that such things happen all the time, when they really don’t.
✏️ Reason 2 🔗 View Highlight
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“Conservative media has promoted these videos as evidence of disorder in liberal cities and under President Biden,” using the crisis narrative to push their own political agenda.
✏️ Reason 3 🔗 View Highlight
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news outlets rely on information from retail companies and don’t question what they’re told. In a CNN article about “Why Retail Theft is Soaring,” for instance, we can find the phrases “Target last week said,” “Nordstrom, Whole Foods and some other big chains said,” “Walmart CEO Doug McMillon said” and “Many other retailers have blamed” used to introduce key points. The writer in question simply repeats the statements and opinions of retail executives uncritically, as if they were settled fact. This is basically journalistic malpractice, and it’s especially bad because retailers have spread false information about shoplifting in the past.
✏️ Reason 4 🔗 View Highlight
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When the daily news media reports on a “crime wave” or a “surge in shoplifting” nearly every time the numbers from the police department fluctuate upward (note that no similar metaphors are used for decreases), they are almost always using these terms to describe the collective behavior of poor people and other marginalized groups. Things rich people do don’t often get this same metaphoric treatment in daily news. How many times do you see a major news story on a “surge” in tax evasion (a problem over 60 times the magnitude of other reported property crimes) or a “wave of crime” by oil companies? In other words, petty thefts committed by poor and working-class people are treated as a crisis, while the much greater crimes committed by the wealthy are just business as usual.
✏️ Reason 5 🔗 View Highlight