Americans tend to believe crime is up, even when the data shows it is down overall since the early '90s. (That's according to the FBI and the Bureau of Justice Statistics.) This is thanks in no small part to news coverage of crime. You've heard the phrase, "If it bleeds, it leads." What happens to a society that watches crime repetitively in the media? How does that affect our perception of the world around us, and does it contribute to a culture of fear and the political divide? Our guest is John Archibald, a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for Alabama Media Group. He's in Cambridge, MA for the year to examine these questions through the Harvard Nieman Fellowship.
Americans tend to believe crime is up, even when the data shows it is down overall since the early '90s. (That's according to the FBI and the Bureau of Justice Statistics.) This is thanks in no small part to news coverage of crime. You've heard the phrase, "If it bleeds, it leads." What happens to a society that watches crime repetitively in the media? How does that affect our perception of the world around us, and does it contribute to a culture of fear and the political divide? Our guest is John Archibald, a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for Alabama Media Group. He's in Cambridge, MA for the year to examine these questions through the Harvard Nieman Fellowship.