What if local news media reported on safety code violations by landlords in the same way they report on low-level crimes that police send them in press releases? What if they reported on local pollution and wage theft violations that local governments document each day?
https://twitter.com/ryangrim/status/1481254272738205699
It's vital to see that editors choose which stories to cover, and they are typically the stories that police and corporations want covered. It shapes our assessments of what is urgent, and focuses us on things that cause minuscule relative harm. A thread:
https://twitter.com/equalityAlec/status/1464270507310727171
This single fire killed almost double the number of people as all murders in NYC combined in a typical week. As this great journalism by @akela_lacy demonstrates, no local news had found it important enough to report on the fire code violations.
Ask yourself: who is determining what "public safety" means, which articles get pitched, and which beats get assigned. Who benefits from so irrationally linking public safety to cops.
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