Crime news norms and practices

The creation of ‘crime news’ is “invariably the result of a long process of selection where the raw material is sifted, shaped, edited and recreated.”[1] The choices made during this process often prioritize ease of production, drama and law enforcement narratives.

Ease and cost-effectiveness

Crime coverage is often pursued because it’s cheap and easy to cover, “allowing newsrooms to churn out content more quickly.”[2] Coverage focuses on “uncommon but sensational incidents of violence.”[3]

Sensationalism

The decision of what makes a story “newsworthy” is dependent on the production processes of news organizations and the consumption habits of audiences. The resulting emphasis often falls on rare, sensational events:

• Focus on violence: Local crime news exhibits a clear violent crime focus, with “75% of local crime stories are about a violent crime, while only 17% of crimes stories are about a property crime,” even though property crimes are significantly more common.[4] This focus is driven by the ingrained “if it bleeds, it leads” mentality and the need to attract attention in commercial media.[5]
• Ignoring white-collar crime: News coverage in the United States disproportionately focuses on index crimes (the narrow subset of crimes tracked by police).[6] Other crimes that impact millions of people and cause significant harm—such as wage theft, housing discrimination, tax evasion or illegal chemical emissions—command far less news coverage.[7] For instance, a viral 21-second video of shoplifting was covered in 309 published pieces in a month, while a $4.5 million wage theft settlement against Walgreens received virtually no general news coverage.[8] Although Statistics Canada tracks all police-reported crime, news coverage tends to follow a similar pattern – violent crimes get more attention even when they’re decreasing, while crimes like fraud receive far less coverage even when they’re on the rise.[9]

Overreliance on official sources

A core practice is the heavy reliance on “official,” accredited sources. Newsrooms often rely solely on police, prosecutors and other criminal legal officials, treating them as default experts. This practice has a long history, reaching back to the old practice of newspapers sending reporters to a “police precinct to report for the police blotter.”[10] Today, this dependence continues because the “multibillion-dollar police public-relations industry is extremely good at feeding these reporters content,” including pictures, video and quotes, making their perspective “the path of least resistance” for new outlets.[11] This practice allows legal officials to “disproportionately influence the way that people understand safety in their communities.”[12]

Unquestioned and unverified claims

Quotes from police officers and prosecutors often dominate coverage and their claims are “not always fact-checked or contextualized.” Early coverage of high-profile events, such as the Uvalde school shooting, included “myriad false claims from police that were later disproven.” In deferring to police, journalists risk becoming “an arm of the law enforcement public relations industry.”

[1] Cere, R., Jewkes, Y., & Ugelvik, T. (2013). Media and crime: a comparative analysis of crime news in the UK, Norway and Italy. In The Routledge handbook of European criminology (pp. 266-279). Routledge.

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

[3] Legum, J., & Crosby R. (2025) Why you might not know that 2024 was Americas safest year since the 1960s. Substack.

[4] Mastrorocco, N., & Ornaghi, A. (2025). Who watches the watchmen? Local news and police behavior in the United States. American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 17(2), 285-318.

[5] Deggans, E. (2020) Eric Deggans on How to Cover Race Without Perpetuating Prejudice. Nieman Reports.

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

[7] Brennan, C. (2023) The Twisted History of the American Crime Anxiety Industry. The Nation.

[8] Keehner, S. (2021) Shoplifting Is Big News; Stealing Millions From Workers Is Not. FAIR.

[9] (2023) Misrepresenting the data on crime. The John Howard Society.

[10] Tameez, H. (2022) What types of local news stories should be automated? The Toronto Star is figuring it out. Nieman Lab.

[11] Golding, Y.T.R. (2025) The Media’s Role in Spreading Copaganda. Columbia Journalism Review

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