I wrote the book Copaganda based on my years of being a civil rights lawyer and public defender representing the most vulnerable people in our society. I watched as the police and the news media distorted how we think about our collective safety. Copaganda makes us afraid of the most powerless people, helps us ignore far greater harms committed by people with money and power, and always pushes on us the idea that our fears can be solved by more money for police, prosecution, and prisons. Based on the evidence, this idea of more investment in the punishment bureaucracy making us safer is like climate science denial.
This excerpt is adapted from an important part of the book on how by selectively choosing which stories to tell, and then telling those stories in high volume, the news can induce people into fear-based panics that have no connection to what is happening in the world. It’s how public polling can show people thinking crime is up when it is down year after year, and how so many well-meaning people are led to falsely believe that marginalized people themselves want more money on surveillance and punishment as the primary solutions to make their lives better.
First off, that’s not a pub I’d have expected to see this in, but media literacy being taught to teens (if they listen) is a very necessary thing.
Still, the situation is more complex than this story distills it down to. One major problem is cops love talking to reporters if they think they’ve gotten something right, and shut the fuck up when errors are pointed out. Which, OK, that’s what we’ve got investigative journalism for.
But you can’t FOIA on deadline, and the editor would still rather have something local for tonight from the beat reporter – whatever it may be – than running 10 more inches of wire.
And the funding just isn’t there for monthlong investigations unless you get to the highest firmament of journalism.
At the newsroom level, there’s no malice aforethought. Think Hanlon. These are people trying to do their jobs and working with what they’re given with limited time available, under the perennial rule that “if it bleeds, it leads.”
Perhaps at the corporate level, there’s some larger thing at play. But there’s no fucking way Mike Reed is micromanaging every lead editor at Gannett into providing stories sympathetic to cops. (I mean, first of all, that would suggest some level of interest in news.)
This is not to say there’s nothing to see here, keep on moving. It is a problem, and there are unethical journalists out there (the cop reporter at my first paper was sleeping with a source and we all knew it), but this is a societal problem, not a journalism one.
To frame it as such is disingenuous. Now, as for broadcasting? Not my wheelhouse, but they’re in the entertainment business, not news. Of course they’re going to have different standards.
But you can’t FOIA on deadline, and the editor would still rather have something local for tonight from the beat reporter – whatever it may be – than running 10 more inches of wire.
I feel like the underlying problem of shallow coverage and lack of time is definitely there, but in a lot of cases it seems like the pendulum has swung all the way around to where the shoot from the hip local news take has become “of course the cops fucked up and shot this random person” in every case now, even when the facts don’t support it.
There are of course news outlets and people who still take the “cops can do no wrong” stance on it. Actually almost everyone decides to fall into one camp or another on every single case, regardless of what the facts support. But I think the issues of time and energy to get it right are just as likely to induce an anti-cop narrative in the present day (interviewing some random family member of a person involved in the incident who may be an unreliable narrator) as a pro-cop one.
Even better is when they just interview a neighbour who knows nothing about the situation other than a whole bunch of cop cars were there last night.
I’ve no defense for what corporate media has become (hence my exit), but no one’s twirling mustaches in the newsroom. There simply isn’t time.
Our job is to get the facts right so that readers at least know what’s going on. Having run a couple of opinion sections, the crackpots have always been with us, but their idiotic letters to the editor were at least able to be quietly round-filed before social media.
Yeah. And yeah, it is a huge problem. I don’t know how we let the absolutely vital task of keeping tabs on what’s going on and publishing it, get tangled up with the profit motive, but I think it’s fair to say that it was a catastrophic blunder. On par with trying to run a private national highway system or a private national military.
Newspapers have always been for-profit enterprises, and this isn’t the first time that’s caused issues (see also: William Randolph Hearst or Citizen Kane). The main difference is the owners used to be local and quite happy with 10% profits. With all the consolidation, the owners are now shareholders demanding line go up in a dying field.
It took me far longer than it should have to realize what the endgame would be with all of this. But I was young and naive and thought people wanted news. Turns out, they didn’t.
You’ve been missing out then. TeenVogue has a handful of pretty high quality, hard hitting articles in the last few years. I keep seeing people saying they are surprised at the source, but I’ve come to expect it now.
With enough layoffs at newspapers, you end up with a robust stable of freelancers. I come from the editing side, but most reporters I’ve worked with wanted to be able to go more longform with looser deadlines.
But this is not original copy; it’s a book excerpt. If that’s what they run to seem more highbrow, more power to them. This just isn’t an example of a “hard-hitting article.”
This sounds a lot like you came here to win an argument on the internet and I don’t come to Lemmy for that
This article isn’t what I’m referring to but Teen Vogue has been doing a better job than a lot of more popular outlets
I’m not here for an argument, just providing context from decades of journalism experience. Words have meaning, and book excerpts certainly have their place, but calling them “news” is inaccurate.
If you’ve ever watched an episode of Law & Order, you’ve watched pro-police propaganda.
Paw Patrol, for the children
FBI, CSI…All that shit
Does Dexter count? In hindsight it was very accurate at times
TBH I’ve seen very little of Dexter, the others are what my SO puts on to sleep…I detest those shows
Dexter had an almost-perfect balance for me of dark humour, procedural and external drama for the first few seasons. No one aspect so overwhelming that it was like “well, fuck, may as well make dinner now.”
If your SO likes pure procedurals, I’d recommend it as something you might both enjoy. The star is Michael C. Hall … if you enjoyed him in Six Feet Under, he’s of course not the same character but brings as much to the table.
Its not that they enjoy the copaganda shows, but like city sounds to go to sleep with, lol…sirens, gunshots, yelling…me? not so much.
What shows we have seen of it are pretty good, just don’t commit to shows.
Oof. My ex was one of those “can’t sleep without noise” types, and I’m a “can’t sleep with noise” guy. We reached a compromise of an oldies station on relatively low volume, but it still drove me up the wall because I heard ads all night.
The things we do for love.
Yup…we both now have earbuds (and 8 have an eyeshade)
You can tell a cop is lying when you see them move their lips.
