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

Author

Listed:
  • Nicola Mastrorocco

    (Department of Economics, Trinity College Dublin)

  • Arianna Ornaghi

    (Department of Economics, University of Warwick)

Abstract

Do the police respond to media coverage of crime? In this paper, we study how a decline in news coverage of local crime affects municipal police departments in the United States. Exogenous variation in local news is from acquisitions of local TV stations by a large broadcast group, Sinclair. To control for other content changes that might be induced by Sinclair but are not municipality-specific, we implement a triple differences-in-differences design that interacts the timing of the acquisitions with an indicator for whether the municipality is covered by the news at baseline, a proxy for exposure to the local news shock. Using a unique dataset of almost 300,000 newscasts, we show that stations that are acquired by Sinclair decrease their coverage of local crime. This matters for policing: after Sinclair enters a media market, covered municipalities experience 10% lower violent crime clearance rates relative to non- covered municipalities. Finally, we provide evidence to suggest that the effect is consistent with a decrease in the salience of crime in the public opinion.

Suggested Citation

  • Nicola Mastrorocco & Arianna Ornaghi, 2020. "Who Watches the Watchmen? Local News and Police Behavior in the United States," Trinity Economics Papers tep0720, Trinity College Dublin, Department of Economics, revised Nov 2020.
    • Handle: RePEc:tcd:tcduee:tep0720
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    Cited by:

    1. Charles Angelucci & Julia Cage & Michael Sinkinson, 2020. "Media Competition and News Diets," Sciences Po publications 2020-03, Sciences Po.
    2. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/4ec86lkes59hv9tfv77ld1p5fr is not listed on IDEAS
    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. 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.
    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. Philine Widmer & Sergio Galletta & Elliott Ash, 2022. "Media Slant is Contagious," Papers 2202.07269, arXiv.org, revised Apr 2023.
    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

    Media; accountability; police;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness
    • K42 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - Illegal Behavior and the Enforcement of Law
    • L82 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Services - - - Entertainment; Media

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