Thread by @equalityAlec

Thread. The New York Times has published another irresponsible, dangerous article contributing to a manufactured panic about "retail theft." A few points you should know. nytimes.com/2021/12/03/bus…

First, look at the "expert" sources the reporters choose to rely on in this story. It's unbelievable, even for a paper that routinely skews toward corporate and police sources. Here are the expert sources the NYT cites, supposedly to help people understand the issue, in order:

-Corporate spokesperson
-Corporate VP
-"Retail executives and security experts"
-"Industry veterans"
-"President of the Coalition of Law Enforcement and Retail"
-"Some industry experts"
-"Head of the California retail trade group"
-Governor
-CLER president (again, twice)
-Sheriff

Notice that the first of these quotes, the opening one in the article, calls this retail shoplifting "violence." As I've written about, controlling what counts as violence against whom is a key feature of enormously unequal societies. currentaffairs.org/2020/08/why-cr…

Second, retail theft is at near historic lows. Corporate wage theft (like these retailers) dwarfs all property crime combined--about $50 billion per year, mostly from the poorest people. These truths are hardly ever told in the pages of the NYT. Ask why.

https://twitter.com/equalityAlec/status/1464270521323954182

Third, do you see a pattern? Remember when the NYT recently reported a story based entirely on the false premise from a corporate PR department that Walgreens (wage theft criminal) closed stores because of shoplifting and not for business reasons?

https://twitter.com/equalityAlec/status/1449760728727105536

Fourth, this article continues the weeks long push by cops and corporate marketing departments to create a a public hysteria over retail theft. Who benefits from this? What immense, existential harms in the world are ignored in favor of these stories?

https://twitter.com/equalityAlec/status/1464270510980743168

Fifth, this is yet another article in a long series of NYT decisions to skew our perceptions about what is important news and what isn't.

https://twitter.com/equalityAlec/status/1464270507310727171

Why is this important? The stakes are high for all of us: we face existential environmental, public health, and democracy-related threats to our flourishing and survival. We need news to provide accurate understanding of what can harm us and analysis of what we can do about it.

Media reprinting corporate press releases about "retail theft" and unscientific debates about whether to cage more people for shoplifting are distractions from the corporate and carceral bureaucracies that are threatening the very survival of our social fabric and our species.

We need less listening to corporate executives and police with their motives of profit and control, and more attention on what kinds of social relationships and institutions that can actually meet the scope of the threats we face.

@sapna @mcorkery5 would love to discuss all of this with you.

UPDATE: It's vital to see how articles like this are used by uninformed/right-wing interests. The story contained several evidence-free assertions by corporate hacks linking retail theft to racial justice protests! And then you watch it reverberate online:

https://twitter.com/thomaschattwill/status/1466762751175446534