Identifying Police and Media Influence on News Coverage: A Critical Guide

In a trend that continues to shape American criminal justice policy, media-driven “moral panics” are once again influencing public perception and legislative responses to crime. These manufactured waves of concern typically target specific groups and behaviors, often leading to expanded policing powers and punitive measures rather than addressing underlying social issues.

Scholars have long identified the pattern: news media saturates coverage with selected stories about particular crimes, creating the impression of a sudden crisis that demands immediate action. These panics follow a historical lineage dating back to Victorian England and continue through modern American society with remarkable consistency.

Recent examples include the 2021-2023 panic about retail theft and ongoing concerns about fare evasion on public transportation. Earlier iterations focused on “crack babies” in the 1980s and “super predators” in the 1990s – terms and concepts that were later largely debunked or proven exaggerated. More acute, localized panics have included the so-called “Summer of Violence” in Denver in 1993, when media coverage of juvenile crime increased dramatically despite actual violent crime rates declining.

The response to these manufactured crises is predictable: expanded budgets for law enforcement, harsher sentencing guidelines, and a shift in resources toward punishment rather than prevention or rehabilitation. For instance, the recent shoplifting panic prompted California lawmakers to allocate an additional $300 million to police and prosecutors specifically to target retail theft. Months later, Governor Gavin Newsom announced what he called the “largest-ever single investment to combat organized retail theft,” adding another $267 million to fifty-five police agencies across the state.

“When shameless criminals walk out of stores with stolen goods, they’ll walk straight into jail cells,” Newsom declared, exemplifying the tough-on-crime rhetoric that typically accompanies such funding initiatives.

The mechanics of these moral panics follow a consistent pattern that has been documented since the 1960s and 1970s, when news media in both England and the United States focused intensely on Black people, poor communities, and immigrants as supposed sources of “crime waves.” Today’s rhetoric from law enforcement officials, prosecutors, and judges mirrors the language used by conservative white business and police organizations from that era, though with a contemporary twist.

“Now there’s more effort to portray such views as ‘progressive’ and demanded by marginalized people themselves,” notes research on the subject, suggesting a strategic reframing of punitive policies to appeal across the political spectrum.

What remains consistent is the selective focus on certain types of crime while ignoring broader context. When the Kerner Commission studied U.S. crime in 1968, it recommended massive social investment to reduce inequality as the most effective approach to reducing violence. These evidence-based recommendations addressing root causes were largely ignored then, just as similar approaches are sidelined today in favor of expanded policing and incarceration.

The cycle continues: media coverage drives public concern, which politicians translate into punitive policies, regardless of whether those responses address the actual problems at hand or merely serve to expand an already massive criminal justice system.

All royalties from the research publication on this topic are being donated to the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition, an organization that works with unhoused people against police violence. The authors have also arranged for free copies to be available to incarcerated individuals and to teachers who wish to discuss these issues with their students.