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

Nicola Mastrorocco and Arianna Ornaghi
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Arianna Ornaghi: Hertie School

QAPEC Discussion Papers from Quantitative and Analytical Political Economy Research Centre

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 acquisitions decrease 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.

Keywords: Police; Local News; Clearance Rates; Sinclair JEL Classification: K42; D73 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-law and nep-ure
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https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/research/c ... _-_qapec_ornaghi.pdf

Related works:
Working Paper: Who Watches the Watchmen? Local News and Police Behavior in the United States (2022)
Working Paper: Who Watches the Watchmen? Local News and Police Behavior in the United States (2020)
Working Paper: Who Watches the Watchmen? Local News and Police Behavior in the United States (2020)
Working Paper: Who Watches the Watchmen? Local News and Police Behavior in the United States (2020)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wrk:wqapec:09

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