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Who Watches the Watchmen? Local News and Police Behavior in the United States

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  • Mastrorocco, Nicola
  • Ornaghi, Arianna

Abstract

Do U.S. municipal police departments respond to news coverage of local crime? We address this question exploiting an exogenous shock to local crime reporting induced by acquisitions of local TV stations by a large broadcast group, Sinclair. Using a unique dataset of 8.5 million news stories and a triple differences design, we document that Sinclair ownership decreases news coverage of local crime. This matters for policing: municipalities that experience the change in news coverage have lower violent crime clearance rates relative to municipalities that do not. The result is consistent with a decrease of crime salience in the public opinion.

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  • Mastrorocco, Nicola & Ornaghi, Arianna, 2022. "Who Watches the Watchmen? Local News and Police Behavior in the United States," CEPR Discussion Papers 17756, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    • Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:17756
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    Cited by:

    1. Charles Angelucci & Julia Cagé & Michael Sinkinson, 2024. "Media Competition and News Diets," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 16(2), pages 62-102, May.
    2. Julia Cagé & Moritz Hengel & Nicolas Hervé & Camille Urvoy, 2022. "Hosting Media Bias: Evidence from the Universe of French Broadcasts, 2002-2020," SciencePo Working papers Main hal-03878119, HAL.
    3. Celislami, Elda & Kastoryano, Stephen & Mastrobuoni, Giovanni, 2023. "Strategic Bureaucratic Opacity: Evidence from Death Investigation Laws and Police Killings," IZA Discussion Papers 16609, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    4. Philine Widmer & Sergio Galletta & Elliott Ash, 2022. "Media Slant is Contagious," Papers 2202.07269, arXiv.org, revised Apr 2023.
    5. Gregory DeAngelo & Matthew Gomies & Rustam Romaniuc, 2023. "Do civilian complaints against police get punished?," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 196(3), pages 453-482, September.
    6. Federico Masera, 2022. "The economics of policing and crimeThe economics of policing and crime," Chapters, in: Paolo Buonanno & Paolo Vanin & Juan Vargas (ed.), A Modern Guide to the Economics of Crime, chapter 2, pages 12-29, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    7. Francesco Barilari & Diego Zambiasi, 2023. "Political Campaigning, and Racial Discrimination in Arrests for Drugs," Trinity Economics Papers tep0223, Trinity College Dublin, Department of Economics.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Police; Ownership concentration; Local news; Political responsiveness;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • K42 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - Illegal Behavior and the Enforcement of Law
    • D73 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Bureaucracy; Administrative Processes in Public Organizations; Corruption

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