The Dems should focus on WHY crime is declining, which is in large part a result of Biden policies. Wages are up, unemployment is down. Life is better.
Fully agree. More people working, more money made, fewer people in poverty, less crime. Except for the white-collar variety. Somehow, that gets played down and costs the nation a lot more than garden variety robbery, benefit-stealing, etc.
Agree but they should probably start by acknowledging that crime is down in the first place. Maybe it's just me but I haven't seen that. The narrative on crime seems to have been ceded to the GOP.
Not so sure about the focus on why. In a perfect world people would listen to explanations about crime. But must don’t take the time because of laziness or their life is already full. MAGA just says something over and over and cult members believe when they hear it hundreds of times. Us educated voters understand the “whys”. But most do not. All they have to do is believe. And then vote on that belief.
Correcting the false information promoted by everyone promoting Trump to rule over our nation is the job of you, Judd, and everyone else in print and sound and visual media!. MSNBC has received the news about this distortion of the news, and has been voicing and describing this abomination. Notice how all of the Trumpian Black candidates are relishing the delivery of this false message! Can anyone here send this Popular Information article to the Black pastor of the "Black" Detroit church filled with white people, an assortment wearing MAGA hats? If so, please do.
Saw Judd on Joy Reid's show last night! We have questions for Pastor Lorenzo Sewell who claimed that Obama never came to the hood! Obama did his serious early Community Service work in the hood of Chicago before running for President! Why did Sewell let himself be played like this?
My understanding was those folks were paid campaign workers. The Washington Post ran a featured photo of an extreme tight crop that showed Black people sitting in the front row, not the photo from a Detroit journalist showing most of the attendees were White. Buried in the Post article was an aside that the Whites were not congregants. If you have to pay Black people to attend your rally, you do not have the support of the Black community. Once again, the Post fails with a deceptive story.
I have a good friend who has been watching CNN and has in the past voted for moderate Republicans. She would tell me that MSNBC was too biased. Now she tells me she will never vote GOP again and is now watching MSNBC. CNN has sold out to the right wing.
"Confirmation bias, people’s tendency to process information by looking for, or interpreting, information that is consistent with their existing beliefs. This biased approach to decision making is largely unintentional, and it results in a person ignoring information that is inconsistent with their beliefs. These beliefs can include a person’s expectations in a given situation and their predictions about a particular outcome. People are especially likely to process information to support their own beliefs when an issue is highly important or self-relevant."
the tendency to gather evidence that confirms preexisting expectations, typically by emphasizing or pursuing supporting evidence while dismissing or failing to seek contradictory evidence."
No, it is not evidence of confirmation bias if someone notices ‘fake news’ in their news source.
For instance, the cropped photo to make Biden look “lost” when he was actually interacting with a paratrooper who had just landed — it is shown in the wider photo shot. Or find out that the seats at the table in the church showing tremendous black support blah blah blah did not represent the audience which was almost totally white. That is visible in video panning the audience from various sources.
Both these and other stories were carried by MSNBC which pointed out the false reporting.
In the few images showing the people in the pews, I saw very very few who were Black. No Black congregation showed up. Perhaps people from Oakland County next door where they had a mass shooting that week & the Oxford school shooting filled the pews or more likely campaign workers & volunteers. You can see a video of the audience if you scroll down in this article.
And then there is the guy who DJT pardoned. A former mayor of Detroit endorsed DJT right before that “round table”. If I had to guess, I’d say the former mayor sees this as an avenue to live large again on the public dime while getting revenge.
It's confirmation bias. Miserable, angry people want to believe miserable, angry information. That's on top of the average American's complete lack of motivation to seek out and understand facts from statistical sources. Who drives me to drink are the contingent of people who on one hand proclaim American exceptionalism while on the other hand claim everything in the country is the absolute worst...and that "worst" turns on a dime based on their confirmation bias. It's exhausting.
Don't forget the contant drumbeat of crime in the news. Every shooting, homicide and robbery gets covered. "If it bleeds it leads," remains too true. People think crime is rising, no matter what, including during the specatcular consistent declines that ran from the mid-1990s through covid (and but for a covid blip, might be continuing)
It’s more than that though. Covering violent crime was always a lead because covering same is relatively inexpensive, yet glues people to the screen. Reporters may not even have a crew these days, just a portable tripod, a cell connection to the station, and a light. It’s a reflection of how much advertising revenue has fallen due to google.
Real investigations by reporters may take time, cost a lot of money, and hence are a lot more rare (see spotlight probe at Boston globe vs. the Catholic Church pedophile sex scandal).
So if given a choice, which type of coverage do you think will get the nod 99% of the time? Of course it’s crime, even if said crime is declining.
Now add the pernicious additional finger on the scale thanks to Sinclair broadcasting controlling the TV newsroom across hundreds of markets, and you have a great explanation re: why there is a lot of doom and gloom in coverage despite economic indicators all pointing in the positive direction.
The republicans and their enablers really have internalized the teachings of Goebbels, among which are repeating a lie often enough leading to the general population believing them. Facts do not matter anymore and the news coverage reflects that.
I was a broadcast engineer in the 1970s (oh dear I'm old!); our mantra was "If it bleeds, it leads," which raised the ratings and advertising revenue. “Philanthropist donates to museum” or “School Committee approves new curriculum” were used as filler at the end.
The news shows have become a "MAGA"- phone, a platform where politicians lie with almost no push back from hosts. If challenged with facts by a host they raise their voices, interrupt the host, and cling more firmly to their lies. The irony of the Age of Information is that there is too little truth.
Great work! Thank you for standing up to the powerful. It’s like the David and Goliath retold for our times, and I am so grateful for what you’re doing.
There is a general trend in the print and broadcast media to report poles, in other words perceptions, rather than facts. This compounds misperceptions and amplifies misinformation. They seem to have abandoned their role in determining through investigation what the actual facts are and then conducting analysis into what these mean.
Media has been doing this for years, I noticed it decades ago. What I see on TV doesn't match my real life experience so I started looking at where these reported crimes were taking place, and it seemed they were in a small area such as, for example, a part of Los Angeles with a high number of poor people living. It's been long said that Black people bear the brunt of crimes by their own people and I think it's because when you are poor, you get a little desperate and maybe resentful at times, so the best target of opportunity is your neighborhood. Even criminals prefer familiarity. So if you really want to fight crime, figure out how to make these people more employable and apply that to anyone who commits crimes. Working people are generally better citizens than people who aren't. At the same time, bad news generates more money for the media than good news, so there's your profit motive.
"Law enforcement" tends to concentrate its efforts in areas where simple assaults, thefts etc. occur, because they're simple crimes to solve and prosecute. There are, on the other hand, many financial and property crimes, missing persons, white collar offenses, etc. that have much lower rates of conviction because it's easier to catch drug sellers, sex workers, burglars and others whose crimes are more in the open.
Journalists have to stop saying "OK" when politicians lie.
Like Scott, Rep. Claudia Tenney is pandering to Trump by running ads across NY State claiming Biden is sending "dangerous" immigrants into the state. Without anyone pushing back on this lie, it will be taken as truth.
Judd - huge fan and a paid subscriber, but your reference to Detroit homicides reaching a 57-year low is misleading. As pointed out by the Detroit Free Press, "[w]hile the total number of people killed was the lowest since 1966, today's homicide rate per capita is much higher than it was then. The city's population was 2.5 times larger in 1966."
Another part is the local news. I no longer watch what my oldest kid call the “copaganda report.” Probably half of the reports on our local news are some kind of crime report straight from the police spokesperson or PR group. Crime is down, but in a 30 minute news program, they report the same number of reports, maybe just more from further suburbs if there aren’t enough juicy ones in the city.
It's on all of us to call out these lies as we see them and (kindly, if it's a friend) correct people on social media if they talk about "high inflation" (inflation is down to around 3.3% from 9.2%, it's getting better..it's corporate price hikes that are keeping costs high)..."crime is through the roof" (actually, it has gone down, add a link to a credible source). The more we correct in a measured way, the more some of this will filter through. It's an uphill battle, but we have to try.
One thing you must admire about elected Repub officials in televised interviews istheat they invariably hew the party's talking points. Crime, lawlessness, immigration, and President Biden's diminished faculties are always mentioned. When challenged with fact checking in real time these representatives know to add another "example" to the talking points being discussed then move on to the next. Repeating the same "truthy" statements again and again is a proven means to influence opinions.
While admirable from a methodology perspective, as others here and elsewhere have noted again and again, moderators or writers must juxtapose real facts with their coverage of these candidates. If more challenges occur there could eventually be less interest in asserting known exaggerations and distortions and a return to policy differences and matters that can shape opinions about which approach could result in the most benefit for citizens.
October 2025. The DOJ detained Judd Legum, an on-line journalist who had advanced several stories critical of the President as well as powerful corporations during the Biden administration. Legum is being held in an undisclosed location, rumored to be a CIA interrogation facility. This arrest follows the detention of several MSNBC producers as well as Rachel Maddow and Joe Scarborough in September. In July, both executive editors of The New York Times and the Washington Post were detained for four weeks in an FBI "retraining center" in Maryland. Through a White House spokesman Trump told Sinclair Media reporters that "These purveyors of fake news and seditious information have to learn that there are consequences for both libel and slander in this country. Treasonist rhetoric will not be tolerated by this administration."
Reminds me of "It Can't Happen Here"(Sinclair Lewis, c1935, prophesying Trump with uncanny accuracy). When I was a journalist I was in a research publication (labour and social affairs), and we knew it was essential to get the context right and not simply parrot what our interviewees said. I'm really surprised that these NYT and WaPo journalists produce such superficial reporting. It reflects so badly on their papers.
It's as though they are unaware of the maths and statistics that show the real picture behind each story. That's the charitable explanation. Or maybe they are too lazy to look into the story behind the story. Or being disingenuous. Just ask: what is he/she saying, why is he/she saying it. Then it's much easier to understand how an impartial journalist should construct the story.
The Dems should focus on WHY crime is declining, which is in large part a result of Biden policies. Wages are up, unemployment is down. Life is better.
Fully agree. More people working, more money made, fewer people in poverty, less crime. Except for the white-collar variety. Somehow, that gets played down and costs the nation a lot more than garden variety robbery, benefit-stealing, etc.
Agree but they should probably start by acknowledging that crime is down in the first place. Maybe it's just me but I haven't seen that. The narrative on crime seems to have been ceded to the GOP.
Not so sure about the focus on why. In a perfect world people would listen to explanations about crime. But must don’t take the time because of laziness or their life is already full. MAGA just says something over and over and cult members believe when they hear it hundreds of times. Us educated voters understand the “whys”. But most do not. All they have to do is believe. And then vote on that belief.
Timothy, And that belief must make THEM feel superior.
Correcting the false information promoted by everyone promoting Trump to rule over our nation is the job of you, Judd, and everyone else in print and sound and visual media!. MSNBC has received the news about this distortion of the news, and has been voicing and describing this abomination. Notice how all of the Trumpian Black candidates are relishing the delivery of this false message! Can anyone here send this Popular Information article to the Black pastor of the "Black" Detroit church filled with white people, an assortment wearing MAGA hats? If so, please do.
Saw Judd on Joy Reid's show last night! We have questions for Pastor Lorenzo Sewell who claimed that Obama never came to the hood! Obama did his serious early Community Service work in the hood of Chicago before running for President! Why did Sewell let himself be played like this?
And only one, or perhaps a few of the Blacks on stage were actually from Detroit. The rest were imported.
My understanding was those folks were paid campaign workers. The Washington Post ran a featured photo of an extreme tight crop that showed Black people sitting in the front row, not the photo from a Detroit journalist showing most of the attendees were White. Buried in the Post article was an aside that the Whites were not congregants. If you have to pay Black people to attend your rally, you do not have the support of the Black community. Once again, the Post fails with a deceptive story.
MSNBC preaches to the converted.
I have a good friend who has been watching CNN and has in the past voted for moderate Republicans. She would tell me that MSNBC was too biased. Now she tells me she will never vote GOP again and is now watching MSNBC. CNN has sold out to the right wing.
And just what is accomplished by only watching and reading news where the bias is what we are comfortable with?
She prefers news reports and commentary based on facts. That's why.
Sorry, but no.
https://www.britannica.com/science/confirmation-bias
"Confirmation bias, people’s tendency to process information by looking for, or interpreting, information that is consistent with their existing beliefs. This biased approach to decision making is largely unintentional, and it results in a person ignoring information that is inconsistent with their beliefs. These beliefs can include a person’s expectations in a given situation and their predictions about a particular outcome. People are especially likely to process information to support their own beliefs when an issue is highly important or self-relevant."
https://dictionary.apa.org/confirmation-bias
"confirmation bias:
the tendency to gather evidence that confirms preexisting expectations, typically by emphasizing or pursuing supporting evidence while dismissing or failing to seek contradictory evidence."
Yes, confirmation bias is a real thing.
No, it is not evidence of confirmation bias if someone notices ‘fake news’ in their news source.
For instance, the cropped photo to make Biden look “lost” when he was actually interacting with a paratrooper who had just landed — it is shown in the wider photo shot. Or find out that the seats at the table in the church showing tremendous black support blah blah blah did not represent the audience which was almost totally white. That is visible in video panning the audience from various sources.
Both these and other stories were carried by MSNBC which pointed out the false reporting.
In the few images showing the people in the pews, I saw very very few who were Black. No Black congregation showed up. Perhaps people from Oakland County next door where they had a mass shooting that week & the Oxford school shooting filled the pews or more likely campaign workers & volunteers. You can see a video of the audience if you scroll down in this article.
https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-black-detroit-church-white-crowd-reactions-1913352
And then there is the guy who DJT pardoned. A former mayor of Detroit endorsed DJT right before that “round table”. If I had to guess, I’d say the former mayor sees this as an avenue to live large again on the public dime while getting revenge.
https://www.wilx.com/2021/01/20/explainer-kwame-kilpatrick-sentence-commuted-as-trump-leaves-office/
It's confirmation bias. Miserable, angry people want to believe miserable, angry information. That's on top of the average American's complete lack of motivation to seek out and understand facts from statistical sources. Who drives me to drink are the contingent of people who on one hand proclaim American exceptionalism while on the other hand claim everything in the country is the absolute worst...and that "worst" turns on a dime based on their confirmation bias. It's exhausting.
Well said. Critical thinking has disappeared.
Don't forget the contant drumbeat of crime in the news. Every shooting, homicide and robbery gets covered. "If it bleeds it leads," remains too true. People think crime is rising, no matter what, including during the specatcular consistent declines that ran from the mid-1990s through covid (and but for a covid blip, might be continuing)
It’s more than that though. Covering violent crime was always a lead because covering same is relatively inexpensive, yet glues people to the screen. Reporters may not even have a crew these days, just a portable tripod, a cell connection to the station, and a light. It’s a reflection of how much advertising revenue has fallen due to google.
Real investigations by reporters may take time, cost a lot of money, and hence are a lot more rare (see spotlight probe at Boston globe vs. the Catholic Church pedophile sex scandal).
So if given a choice, which type of coverage do you think will get the nod 99% of the time? Of course it’s crime, even if said crime is declining.
Now add the pernicious additional finger on the scale thanks to Sinclair broadcasting controlling the TV newsroom across hundreds of markets, and you have a great explanation re: why there is a lot of doom and gloom in coverage despite economic indicators all pointing in the positive direction.
The republicans and their enablers really have internalized the teachings of Goebbels, among which are repeating a lie often enough leading to the general population believing them. Facts do not matter anymore and the news coverage reflects that.
I was a broadcast engineer in the 1970s (oh dear I'm old!); our mantra was "If it bleeds, it leads," which raised the ratings and advertising revenue. “Philanthropist donates to museum” or “School Committee approves new curriculum” were used as filler at the end.
Great reporting and great job rattling the cage!
The news shows have become a "MAGA"- phone, a platform where politicians lie with almost no push back from hosts. If challenged with facts by a host they raise their voices, interrupt the host, and cling more firmly to their lies. The irony of the Age of Information is that there is too little truth.
Great work! Thank you for standing up to the powerful. It’s like the David and Goliath retold for our times, and I am so grateful for what you’re doing.
There is a general trend in the print and broadcast media to report poles, in other words perceptions, rather than facts. This compounds misperceptions and amplifies misinformation. They seem to have abandoned their role in determining through investigation what the actual facts are and then conducting analysis into what these mean.
Perceptions they themselves created. “What do you think?” “Well, I saw on TV…”
Media has been doing this for years, I noticed it decades ago. What I see on TV doesn't match my real life experience so I started looking at where these reported crimes were taking place, and it seemed they were in a small area such as, for example, a part of Los Angeles with a high number of poor people living. It's been long said that Black people bear the brunt of crimes by their own people and I think it's because when you are poor, you get a little desperate and maybe resentful at times, so the best target of opportunity is your neighborhood. Even criminals prefer familiarity. So if you really want to fight crime, figure out how to make these people more employable and apply that to anyone who commits crimes. Working people are generally better citizens than people who aren't. At the same time, bad news generates more money for the media than good news, so there's your profit motive.
"Law enforcement" tends to concentrate its efforts in areas where simple assaults, thefts etc. occur, because they're simple crimes to solve and prosecute. There are, on the other hand, many financial and property crimes, missing persons, white collar offenses, etc. that have much lower rates of conviction because it's easier to catch drug sellers, sex workers, burglars and others whose crimes are more in the open.
I'm glad you're getting credit for rattling those cages, Judd. Keep it up!
Journalists have to stop saying "OK" when politicians lie.
Like Scott, Rep. Claudia Tenney is pandering to Trump by running ads across NY State claiming Biden is sending "dangerous" immigrants into the state. Without anyone pushing back on this lie, it will be taken as truth.
Judd - huge fan and a paid subscriber, but your reference to Detroit homicides reaching a 57-year low is misleading. As pointed out by the Detroit Free Press, "[w]hile the total number of people killed was the lowest since 1966, today's homicide rate per capita is much higher than it was then. The city's population was 2.5 times larger in 1966."
Fair point. Thanks.
Another part is the local news. I no longer watch what my oldest kid call the “copaganda report.” Probably half of the reports on our local news are some kind of crime report straight from the police spokesperson or PR group. Crime is down, but in a 30 minute news program, they report the same number of reports, maybe just more from further suburbs if there aren’t enough juicy ones in the city.
It's on all of us to call out these lies as we see them and (kindly, if it's a friend) correct people on social media if they talk about "high inflation" (inflation is down to around 3.3% from 9.2%, it's getting better..it's corporate price hikes that are keeping costs high)..."crime is through the roof" (actually, it has gone down, add a link to a credible source). The more we correct in a measured way, the more some of this will filter through. It's an uphill battle, but we have to try.
PI is amazing ... 3 people bringing companies to their knees... truth hurts..Thank you as always
One thing you must admire about elected Repub officials in televised interviews istheat they invariably hew the party's talking points. Crime, lawlessness, immigration, and President Biden's diminished faculties are always mentioned. When challenged with fact checking in real time these representatives know to add another "example" to the talking points being discussed then move on to the next. Repeating the same "truthy" statements again and again is a proven means to influence opinions.
While admirable from a methodology perspective, as others here and elsewhere have noted again and again, moderators or writers must juxtapose real facts with their coverage of these candidates. If more challenges occur there could eventually be less interest in asserting known exaggerations and distortions and a return to policy differences and matters that can shape opinions about which approach could result in the most benefit for citizens.
Tim Scott is openly pandering to Trump for either running mate or another post.
October 2025. The DOJ detained Judd Legum, an on-line journalist who had advanced several stories critical of the President as well as powerful corporations during the Biden administration. Legum is being held in an undisclosed location, rumored to be a CIA interrogation facility. This arrest follows the detention of several MSNBC producers as well as Rachel Maddow and Joe Scarborough in September. In July, both executive editors of The New York Times and the Washington Post were detained for four weeks in an FBI "retraining center" in Maryland. Through a White House spokesman Trump told Sinclair Media reporters that "These purveyors of fake news and seditious information have to learn that there are consequences for both libel and slander in this country. Treasonist rhetoric will not be tolerated by this administration."
Reminds me of "It Can't Happen Here"(Sinclair Lewis, c1935, prophesying Trump with uncanny accuracy). When I was a journalist I was in a research publication (labour and social affairs), and we knew it was essential to get the context right and not simply parrot what our interviewees said. I'm really surprised that these NYT and WaPo journalists produce such superficial reporting. It reflects so badly on their papers.
It's as though they are unaware of the maths and statistics that show the real picture behind each story. That's the charitable explanation. Or maybe they are too lazy to look into the story behind the story. Or being disingenuous. Just ask: what is he/she saying, why is he/she saying it. Then it's much easier to understand how an impartial journalist should construct the story.
Too close to potential reality for comfort.