B John Arceno and Luke Kyaw
SAN FRANCISCO, CA – Responding to what he calls the San Francisco Chronicle’s media sensationalism, criminal law professor Carissa Byrne Hessick took to Twitter to criticize various media outlets for their failure to practice objective media journalism.
A Chronicle article itself, Hessick said, attributes the crimes to the increased tourism in the Bay Area, a direct result of the lax COVID-19 constraints.
The numbers, as presented, don’t necessarily tell the real story, Hessick suggests.
According to Hessick, the problem lies with how the statistical data conflates the reality of the reported car break-ins. She contends that with the Chronicle tweeting that the “car break-ins are up 753 percent in S.F.’s tourist hub,” the newspaper is sensationalizing the story for the sake of luring readers.
“Focusing on percent increases (rather than numbers) or cherry-picking particular statistics is effective clickbait,” Hessick tweeted. “And it paints a picture of out-of-control crime.”
In short, if—in effect—“it bleeds, it leads.”
Rohan Upadhyay, political contributor of Medium, wrote about the apparent political biases that the news media promote and how “CNN is funded by the Petroleum Institute and Kocher Institute while MSNBC is funded by America’s Natural Gas Alliance.”
He said big oil companies have more incentives to align themselves with conservative platforms due to their laissez faire economic policies, but left-leaning media surprisingly relies on them financially despite their opposing political views.
Hessick’s criticism against news outlet aligns with Upadhyay’s analysis “that news media doesn’t have a ‘liberal bias’ or a ‘conservative bias’ — it has a ‘viewership bias.’”
So while news outlets are promoting certain political agendas, she says it’s done mostly with the intent to “stir drama” which increases viewership. She claims that this is what the San Francisco Chronicle is doing with their “rising crime” rhetoric.
Other media outlets have reported on the increase in homicides in cities across the nation.
According to Lois Beckett and Abene Chayton from The Guardian, Chicago saw an increase of more than 300 homicide victims in 2020 than in 2019. They said New York City had an increase of 150 homicides. Smaller cities like Richmond, CA also saw a rise from 17 to 22 people killed from homicides in 2020.
Evidently, Beckett and Chayton claim this brings forward expected causes for concern and safety, but many media outlets are fanning the flames to be bigger than what they really are.
The news media, rather than focusing on the numerical statistics of the increase in homicides, choose to narrate the circumstances through the percentage increases in the homicide rate, which are substantially larger than the former.
For instance, Creede Newton of Aljazeera pointed out that the Police Bureau of Portland reported an increase from two to 10 homicides in 2021 thus far. He said that this relatively modest increase of eight homicides can be translated into approximately a 500 percent jump.
Hessick said that big numbers are not needed to translate into big percentages. And while the percentage increases remain true, she said they are able to present a much more erratic and inflated picture of the national rise in killings than their numerical counterparts.
In the current era of pandemic-induced stress, unprecedented political polarization, and calls for police reform, the law professor said this increase of homicides in the past year has been on the minds of a lot of groups as well as the general public.
However, she said it is also important to be alert to any possible sensationalism of media coverage lest they interpret the situation differently from what it actually may be.
I don’t think the left should cry too much about lack of objective journalism. Believe me, they’re way ahead of the game when it comes to fairness in our mainly left stream news media.
Does it occur to you that the “left” as you call it is not a monolith and doesn’t necessarily view the world in those terms.
What terms? “left”? Most people are either left of center or right of center, there are very few that are straight up neutral or dead center on the political spectrum.
It’s even “worse” than that, Keith.
Some people might be “extreme left” on some issues”, and “extreme right” on other issues.
You don’t want to drive behind them, unless you can count on them using their “virtue” (or “non-virtue”) signals. 🙂
And then, some are “moderates”, but are actually not “moderate”.
Don’t even try to differentiate between progressive and liberal.
For one thing – crime reform advocates aren’t just left liberals, there is a fair number of conservative and libertarian interests involved.