Best practices for improving crime reporting

To counteract the structural biases and sensationalist tropes that currently dominate crime coverage, newsrooms must deliberately shift their practices toward accountability, context and the humanization of those affected. Improving crime reporting requires journalists to articulate a new journalistic purpose and prioritize structural analysis over episodic details.

Re-evaluating sources and challenging official narratives

A fundamental best practice involves critically examining the traditional reliance on law enforcement and official sources, who often possess specific organizational agendas.[1]

• Newsrooms should stop relying solely on police, prosecutors and corrections officials as the only sources for public safety coverage. Instead, reporters should include community members recognized as experts, as well as health and/or public health experts (other than law enforcement). These non-police sources are crucial for explaining the macro-level causes of crime and discussing solutions.
• Claims from sources like police officers and prosecutors should be fact-checked or contextualized. If officials or departments have previously made inaccurate statements, they shouldn’t be quoted without disclaimers. Furthermore, reporters should disclose ties to policing or other conflicts of interest when quoting sources, such as mentioning that a "policing expert" was a police officer for two decades.[2] Using the phrasing "Police said they delayed breaching the classroom" is technically more accurate than simply stating "Police delayed breaching the classroom" without attribution, which avoids uncritically parroting the police’s word.[3]
• Avoid using language that obscures responsibility, particularly in cases involving police violence. This includes avoiding the passive voice, nominalization (like "officer-involved shooting"), and intransitive verbs.[4]
• Reporters and editors should engage in self-auditing by asking specific, critical questions about their coverage:
  • Why is this story newsworthy, when other potential stories about harm are ignored?
  • Who are the sources interviewed, and whose perspective is left out?
  • Does the level of attention paid to certain stories match the amount of social harm the issue is actually causing?
  • How might the story have been told by different groups of sources with different perspectives?[5]

Providing context

Instead of presenting crime as a series of isolated events caused by "bad people,"[6] reporting should focus on systemic causes and solutions.

• Reporters should move away from individualistic definitions of crime by framing gun violence, for example, as a structural issue. This involves explaining the drivers of disparities, such as structural racism, concentrated poverty and lack of access to social supports, rather than solely discussing the scope of the problem.
• Coverage should start with an individual situation but also provide context. It should include information or resources that are part of the solution. For instance, journalists should point to the work being done to stop gun violence and refer to systemic problems that contribute to the likelihood of experiencing it, such as families separated by mass incarceration.[7]
• Newsrooms should obtain data, understand crime trends and accurately inform the public. They should use data in context to discuss trends or the effects of policy choices. Journalists should also emphasize that mass shootings and stranger violence are rare.[8]

Humanizing victims and minimizing harm

Crime reporting has been found to exacerbate recovery for trauma victims. Best practices mandate focusing on the humanity of those affected while avoiding sensationalism and stigma.

• Reporters should humanize victims and tell their stories using their own accounts or those of close family and community members – for example, using humanizing language like "son" or "father" to describe them.[9]
• To minimize harm, reporters shouldn’t include details like the clinical condition of the victim, the number of gunshot wounds or the treating hospital without first obtaining the victim’s consent. They should also avoid including graphic images of the shooting or crime scene.[10] They shouldn’t use sensationalizing language or dramatize traumatic situations.[11]
• Some newsrooms have started making positive changes, like no longer using mugshots and creating appeal processes for the public to have stories removed from news sites.[12] News organizations must continuously examine their editorial practices, recognizing that coverage should go beyond what is merely “interesting” to focus on what is meaningful to the news consumer.[13]

[1] Bennett, L., & Karakatsanis, A. (2025) Building a Better Beat: A New Approach to Public Safety Reporting. The Center for Just Journalism.

[2] Bennett, L., & Karakatsanis, A. (2025) Building a Better Beat: A New Approach to Public Safety Reporting. The Center for Just Journalism.

[3] Malone, E. (2023) We Need to Abolish The Past Exonerative Tense In Stories About Police Killings, Traffic Violence. Buzzfeed News.

[4] Moreno-Medina, J., Ouss, A., Bayer, P., & Ba, B. A. (2025). Officer-involved: The media language of police killings. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 140(2), 1525-1580.

[5] Karakatsanis, A. (2025) Copaganda. The New Press.

[6] Ludwig, J. (2025). Unforgiving Places: The Unexpected Origins of American Gun Violence. In Unforgiving Places. University of Chicago Press.

[7] (2024) Better Gun Violence Reporting: A Toolkit for Minimizing Harm. FrameWorks.

[8] Thompson-Morton, C. (2024) Newsrooms working to transform their crime coverage are seeing the payoffs. Poynter.

[9] Lohmeyer, S. (2023) What the media often misses when they cover cases of police violence. Grid.

[10] (2024) Better Gun Violence Reporting: A Toolkit for Minimizing Harm. FrameWorks.

[11] (2024) Better Gun Violence Reporting: A Toolkit for Minimizing Harm. FrameWorks.

[12] Chappell, T., & Rispoli M. (2020) Defund the Crime Beat. NiemanLab.

[13] Thompson-Morton, C. (2024) Newsrooms working to transform their crime coverage are seeing the payoffs. Poynter.