“The Post has consistently, historically covered crime in New York City,” a spokesperson said. “When the crimes are particularly newsworthy — like people getting shoved onto subway tracks, joggers being raped, teenage girls being killed in gang battle crossfire, a woman being killed by an abusive husband when he is released hours after beating her — we will, of course, run them on the front page.”
Indeed, major crime is up 29 percent in New York City over last year — having risen since 2020, statistics show. Much of this year’s rise is driven by increases in property crime, such as grand larceny. Murders and shootings that dominate local news coverage are down by about 14 percent each this year, though they still haven’t dipped to pre-pandemic levels. At the same time, Republican-run states crowd the top-10 list for murder rates.
In New York, coverage of crime has outpaced its rise. New York news outlets have run 58,131 stories about crime so far this year — a 42-percent spike over the 40,665 such stories published in the same period last year, according to data from the tracking service Media Cloud. There were just 28,638 for the period in 2020.
“The coverage of crime hasn’t always been commensurate with how much crime is actually happening,” said Ravi Mangla, communications manager for the liberal Working Families Party, who said he was sharing his own views not speaking on behalf of the party. “There’s no denying that we have seen more media coverage, relative to the amount of crime, than we were seeing even just relative to a year or two years ago.”
And New York City’s media market stretches well into its populated suburbs, meaning voters on Long Island and in the Hudson Valley see many of city’s news casts. Local media has long lived by the mantra “if it bleeds, it leads,” but crime has been a particular focus in light of state bail reform enacted in 2020.
While the data doesn’t bear out their assertions, Republicans have blamed the New York’s rising crime — which mirrors national trends — on the elimination of cash bail for most non-violent state crimes. It’s been litigated in the press for years, and bail has become a de facto campaign issue for many on the right.
In New York, voters consistently ranked crime among their top concerns in polls, while voters nationally did not.
