Democracy Dies in Darkness

What’s the non-obvious reason Fox News is talking about crime more?

Analysis by
National columnist
October 26, 2022 at 3:42 p.m. EDT
Herschel Walker, Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Georgia, flashes a police badge as he speaks to supporters during a campaign rally Oct. 18 in Atlanta. (John Bazemore/AP)
6 min

A few weeks ago, I wrote an article headlined “Crime is surging (in Fox News coverage).” It was a follow-up to an article I’d written a few weeks prior, exploring the fact that real-time crime data is anecdotal, cherry-picked or both.

We know that violent crime rose in 2020, but it’s not clear that it did nationally in 2021. We know crime is up in some places this year, but not always where or how much. In New York City, for example, violent crime is up overall, but murder is down. In a lot of other places, we simply don’t have good data.