Crime rates are still dropping historically. But the GOP will continue to tell another Big Lie.

And corporate media helps Republicans, running sensational stories--without context--that fuel public opinion.

The reality of crime in America has never been so out of sync with public opinion, and that’s particularly true among Republicans and MAGA.

Crime ticked up during the pandemic as courts were closed, police were sick, schools were shut down, and life was in general disarray. But crime isn’t just dropping now to pre-pandemic levels. It’s dropping to rates lower than before COVID under Donald Trump’s presidency. NBC reported on the latest FBI data:

The new fourth-quarter numbers showed a 13% decline in murder in 2023 from 2022, a 6% decline in reported violent crime, and a 4% decline in reported property crime. That’s based on data from around 13,000 law enforcement agencies, policing about 82% of the U.S. population, that provided the FBI with data through December.

“It suggests that when we get the final data in October, we will have seen likely the largest one-year decline in murder that has ever been recorded,” said Jeff Asher, a former CIA analyst who now studies crime trends.

The largest one-year decline in murder ever recorded.

President Biden took some credit, pointing to initiatives of the Justice Department, and Attorney General Garland took credit as well:

Since then, our prosecutors, agents, and grant-making experts have worked in close partnership with police departments and communities across the country to go after the recidivists and gangs that are responsible for the greatest violence; to seize illegal guns and deadly drugs; to make critical investments in hiring more law enforcement officers; and to fund evidence-based, community violence intervention initiatives.

And yet a Gallup poll just three months ago found that 77% of Americans believe there is more crime in the U.S. than a year ago. Republicans overwhelmingly believe this—92%, which skews the overall number high—but even 58% of Democrats believe it.

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You have only to look at a Trump rally or the political attacks by Republicans to see why MAGA believes it.

Trump rails against cities like New York, which he paints as nightmarish places that he claims are filled with violence and robberies, even though New York crime rates are lower than those of cities in Florida, where Trump lives and Republican Ron DeSantis is governor. Crime rates right now are lower in New York than in most of red America; Alabama has double the homicides of New York, and there is currently a red state murder crisis. Yep, crime is a bigger problem in the Welfare States, while the Donor States that fund anti-crime initiatives have seen the largest drop.

The GOP has been viciously attacking migrants as they focus on the border, highlighting the few violent crimes that happen to be committed by immigrants—the latest twisted event was the disastrous response to the State of the Union by Sen. Katie Britt, who lied about a woman who was gang-raped inside Mexico decades ago, implying it was committed by migrants in the U.S. at the border recently—even though immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than U.S.-born citizens.

And though they focus on the death of someone killed by an immigrant—plastering the victim’s name around Congress—we never see them saying the names of mass-shooting victims or talking about how we need to stop the ability of would-be murderers to get guns so easily. (And this proves they don’t really care about murder victims.)

So, it’s an easy explanation as to why many Republicans overwhelmingly believe crime is out of control when it’s actually down. They simply want to believe it, as it fulfills their racial and political agenda, and their leaders feed them lies to sustain it.

But why do even so many other Americans, including many Democrats, believe crime is still high? Well, let’s first talk a bit more about gun violence and mass shootings, which have reached record highs in recent years. For many Americans, when they are asked about violent crime, they think of mass shootings, so of course they’d say crime is not appearing to be dropping. (And imagine how much lower crime rates would be—even as they're dropping at a fast pace—if we had sensible gun laws.)

But even when you account for mass shootings, there’s still a perception that other kinds of violent crimes are up—from robberies and thefts to vandalism and assault. And yet, those crimes are down. And that’s a problem with our corporate media and social media. It’s always been the case that “if it bleeds, it leads.” But we’re in a world now where everything is sensationalized online within minutes.

On the days where there are no crimes in a particular locality, the local media don’t report, “There were no crimes today.” They only report about crime when it happens. And if it’s a big or moderate-sized city, there are bound to be a few crimes a day, so that feeds perception, even if the rate of crime has dropped.

But there’s got to be something more to it than that. After all, we don’t hear about the airplanes that are landing safely every day either—we only hear about the crashes or the doors blowing out—yet most of us still feel confident enough to travel by air. We know that it is safer to fly than to drive or use other kinds of public transportation.

And I think the reason we know that is because there’s an industry—the airline industry—with public relations professionals and lobbyists who make sure we all know the facts and the data, pushing the message through the media. Sometimes you’ll see a media report about how safe air travel is, even during or after a major accident. It’s as if journalists feel obligated to let the public know that, in context, this particular news event is rare. Imagine that—context.

But on crime, we have no such industry demanding context, and in fact, we have one political party promoting disinformation for political gain.

So I think it’s up to the Democrats to push the truth and demand the media state the crime rates even as they report on crimes—and I’m glad Biden and the DOJ weighed in on the crime rates—whether or not Democrats’ policies actually had an impact on bringing down crime rates. If the GOP is going to use the issue to push a political agenda, Democrats also have to fight back through the media.