Editors at Issues and Insights highlight efforts to downplay disappointing crime numbers.
The closer we got to the midterm elections, the more desperate Democrats have been to either downplay the crime wave or blame it all on Republicans. But it turns out that the FBI has been making it more difficult to get accurate crime data as well.
For months, Democrats and the press have argued that crime isn’t as bad as it’s being made to seem and that Republicans are sensationalizing it to scare voters.
“If it’s the fall of a year ending in an even number, you can be pretty sure Republicans will try to scare you with paranoia about crime — specifically, violent crime committed by dark-skinned people,” says Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank.
The press also jumped all over a study suggesting that murder rates are higher in Republican-controlled states than those run by Democrats.
“Republican politicians routinely claim that cities run by Democrats have been experiencing crime waves caused by failed governance, but a new study shows murder rates are actually higher in states and cities controlled by Republicans,” one outlet put it.
The media pointed to a report called “The Red State Murder Problem,” which claims that “8 of the 10 states with the highest murder rates in 2020 voted for the Republican presidential nominee in every election this century.”
The press described the organization behind the report — The Third Way — as a “center-left think tank,” so, you know, it has to be true. (Never mind that the authors have both been operatives of leftist Democrats.)
Their research amounts to nothing more than lying with statistics.
“The study’s authors and those reporting its results took advantage of the fact that the average reader does not know much about crime trends, how crime rates are calculated, and at what level (city/county/state, etc.) these statistics should be reviewed,” the Heritage Foundation explains in a report — titled “The Blue City Murder Problem” — released Friday.
