Fox News centered much of its reporting in 2022 around fearmongering about a supposed “crime crisis” — a misleading narrative that was largely created by its own relentless coverage. By focusing on racist stereotypes, smearing progressive prosecutors, and pushing conspiracy theories, Fox News made crime one of the biggest perceived ailments in the country and pushed far-right policy prescriptions ahead of the election.
From the start, Fox used the issue of crime to push right-wing narratives. The media outlet began the year by describing America as a country experiencing anarchy and lawlessness. Fox News personalities focused their coverage on Democratic-led cities like Chicago and New York, dubbing the issue a “Blue-City Crime Crisis.” However, the facts don’t support these claims: According to FBI statistics, violent crime actually decreased overall in 2021, and the largest increases of murder rates were in Republican-controlled states.
Despite the rise in crime not being a story backed by hard evidence in the statistics, Fox News still found ways to focus on the drama of a crime crisis — particularly in the lead up to the 2022 midterms, when Fox News devoted 11% of its coverage to crime. As The Washington Post’s Phillip Bump noted, “Stories of violent incidents, always catnip for newscasts, are used to portray a sense of crime that may or may not comport with reality. And Fox News has been very active in trying to portray exactly that sense.”
The network’s misleading crime coverage in 2022 included calls for more draconian solutions. Fox personalities began arguing for a return to “Broken Windows” policing, which involves aggressive enforcement and harsher sentences for lower level crimes. In reality, there is no evidence that this strategy works as a deterrent to reduce crime, and other heavy-handed policing tactics based on the broken windows theory have been found to significantly discriminate against Black Americans and other minority groups.
The talking heads on Fox also targeted progressive prosecutors, smearing their efforts at reforms as “pro-criminal” and often linking their criticisms to Jewish philanthropist George Soros — a frequent focus of antisemitic conspiracy theories from the right. In reality, there does not appear to be a significant trend of crime rising in Democratic-led cities with progressive prosecutors. In fact, there is no evidence that rising crime rates are related only to prosecutorial discretion or ending cash bail.
Rather than reporting the real news about crime in the U.S., Fox chose to fearmonger with racism and antisemitic conspiracy theories. Here’s a look at how the network used crime coverage to push a far-right political agenda throughout 2022.
Exploiting crime coverage to push blatant racism
Much of Fox News’ crime coverage in 2022 echoed racist tropes about “Black-on-Black crime” in an apparent effort to undermine police reforms and focus attention on racial divisions in America.
- Criticizing the Black Lives Matter movement in January, Fox host Jesse Watters pushed the racist narrative that “police officers are almost always saving Black lives from Black-on-Black crime.”