Mainstream media outlets are bombarding prospective voters with coverage about crime, playing into election narratives from conservatives and Republicans that blame both individual incidents and broad nationwide trends on Democrats. But this news coverage often fails to debunk these disproved GOP narratives or note that violent crime has also risen in GOP-run areas.

Some notable recent mainstream media failures in pre-midterm reporting include giving a free pass to Georgia U.S. Senate nominee Herschel Walker’s lack of performance in debates, failing to press GOP nominees on their scandals and flip-flops, scandalizing Pennsylvania Democratic Senate nominee John Fetterman’s recovery from his stroke earlier this year, and allowing Arizona’s secretary of state nominee Mark Finchem to spout conspiracy theories and lie his way through an interview unchallenged.

The poor coverage has continued in some news reports about crime as an issue in the upcoming elections. Republicans have hyped the specter of crime to an absurd degree, and numerous stories have taken the bait, featuring snippets of GOP ads, quotes from Republicans emphasizing narratives blaming Democratic policies or focusing on crime in Democratic-run areas, and/or focusing on polling showing that voters prefer Republicans to Democrats on crime.

A September 26 New York Times article headlined “G.O.P. redoubles efforts to tie Democrats to high crime rates” included all of these Republican-friendly narratives. An October 5 Politico article headlined “Midterm voters key in on crime” noted, “Republicans relentlessly tie Democrats to a pandemic-era rise in crime on the campaign trail and in TV ads.” An October 15 article from The Hill, headlined “Republicans ride crime wave worries in midterms home stretch,” reported that “Republicans up and down the ballot are working to make worries about a crime wave translate to a red wave,” citing one political ad in Illinois, quoting one Republican gubernatorial candidate, and citing multiple polls on the issue including one saying voters think Republicans are “better suited to deal with crime than Democrats.” 

On October 20, NPR’s All Things Considered aired a segment which bore the online headline “Democrats are embracing the police, but can that distract from crime in their cities?” An October 25 Associated Press story on the New York gubernatorial race explained that “Republicans around the country are closing with a message that follows closely to what [Lee] Zeldin has argued much of the year. In recent debates from Georgia to Michigan and Wisconsin, GOP contenders have blasted Democrats as inattentive to crime.” And on October 21, NBC News correspondent Dasha Burns aired a segment on MSNBC’s Morning Joe pushing GOP narratives on crime in Pennsylvania.

Yet, for all this attention given to GOP narratives on crime, none of these stories pointed out that while Republicans blame Democrats for violent crime, it’s nearly as high or worse in GOP-run parts of the country. In June, The Wall Street Journal reported that “Violent crime isn’t just rising in the nation’s cities. Murder rates across the rural U.S. have soared during the pandemic.” From the article:

The center-left think tank Third Way released a report on March 15 titled “The red state murder problem,” which found that “despite a media narrative to the contrary, this is a problem that afflicts Republican-run cities and states as much or more than the Democratic bastions.” 

Third Way also found that in 2020, “per capita murder rates were 40% higher in states won by Donald Trump than those won by Joe Biden” and “8 of the 10 states with the highest murder rates in 2020 voted for the Republican presidential nominee in every election this century.” 

From the report, which used data from 2019 and 2020 because data from 2021 wasn’t yet available:

An October 20 article published in The Atlantic also reported on “an exhaustive new study” from the Center for American Progress that “compares cities that have elected so-called progressive prosecutors with places whose district attorneys continue to pursue more traditional approaches.” 

Senior editor Ronald Brownstein explained that this study “found that murder rates increased in a smaller share of cities with progressive prosecutors (56 percent) than in those with traditional prosecutors (68 percent) or prosecutors who fell in the middle (62 percent).” From the article:

And on October 22, former Washington Post columnist Radley Balko, who often writes about the criminal justice system, exposed the GOP’s bait-and-switch when focusing on crime in Democratic-run areas while upbraiding a sloppy column in the Post from his former colleague and serial misinformer Marc Thiessen. From Balko's substack newsletter, The Watch:

This crucial context is missing from the mainstream media reports listed above, which consistently push the right-wing narrative that Democrats are to blame for high crime. 

Many of the articles we mentioned above highlighted polls showing Republicans having an advantage on this issue. The New York Times article stated: “Polling shows that voters tend to see Republicans as stronger on public safety. By a margin of 10 percentage points, voters nationwide said they agreed more with Republicans on crime and policing, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll” from September. 

Politico reported that “Republicans are leaning into fears that are evident in the polling: About three-quarters of respondents said violent crime is increasing nationally.” The Hill cited three polls on the importance of crime to voters for the upcoming elections, then added: “Another Sept. 23-Oct. 3 Reuters poll found that more voters think Republicans are better suited to deal with crime than Democrats, 39 percent to 30 percent.” 

With the stated importance of this issue among voters, media outlets have a responsibility to get the story correct; rather than relying on what voters think is happening with crime, they should tell readers the reality. If they did, perhaps the polls they cite wouldn’t be so favorable to the Republicans who are lying about crime.