(image: Copwatch Media)

This week on CounterSpin: There are reasons that so much news media is consumed with crime. Not just any crime, not wage theft, not lethal pollution—but street crime, random, individual crime. “If it bleeds, it leads” journalism draws eyes to the set, doesn’t bother advertisers, is cheap to produce and lets news outlets look as though they’re tracking an important event in real time, and pretend as though they’re protecting real people…as they forcibly distract from actual humane efforts to respond to the ongoing crises—homelessness, poverty, addiction—that lead to crime, but are less cheap and easy to cover than cops and robbers. It’s a story old as journalism, but it’s still messed up. We’ll talk about that with activist and writer Josmar Trujillo, working now with Copwatch Media, a community-based project that reports on the effects of hyper-policing on communities.

Transcript: ‘The Core of Copaganda Is the Symbiotic Relationship Between Press and Police’

Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look back at recent press coverage of inflation, immigration restriction and democracy.