This sentence belongs in journalism hall of fame. It constructs a vague, false notion (crime is up) by not asserting fact but saying that “critics” are “saying” it. Having constructed false premise, it then passively declares that DA’s policies “have taken the blame.” What? Who? This is like saying that oil production doesn’t impact climate change but “some critics” are blaming Greenpeace for worldwide anxiety about gas prices without noting that the unnamed critics are PR reps for Exxon.

NYT allows corporate-backed SF Mayor with history of lying to say her crackdown was to “counter rampant street crimes” and not to criminalize homelessness and help real estate. The reporter doesn’t note that crime is down in San Francisco and in Tenderloin since before the pandemic.

Finally, something must be said about how the piece continues the NYT’s campaign against “progressive prosecutors.” The NYT goes after the progressive DA in Baltimore (who is a Black woman). The NYT’s portrayal of Mosby is incredible.

The people I work with every day like crime survivors, families of victims, and scientific researchers who study safety don’t oppose more cops only b/c it discriminates. We oppose investments in more police and prisons because it doesn’t make anyone safe.

Consider the picture of reality offered by the New York Times: the media and the powerful have no role manipulating opinion. Policy positions of elites organically spread from the hearts and minds of the most vulnerable people. Then, elites magically adapt to will of the most vulnerable people. Even though science/history shows a policy doesn’t reduce violence, elites do it anyway, not b/c it produces profit and ensures their power, but b/c powerless people demand it. See NYT readers, we have Democracy!

The manufactured “crime wave” but lack of urgent daily attention to existential threats like ecological collapse and rising fascism is a threat to our survival.

I’ve shown before that this is a common forms of copaganda in New York Times: stating the asserted motivations of powerful people as their actual motivations.

In fact, NYT’s claim is actually bolder: it was the Democrats' laudable sensitivity to the concerns of “communities of color” that motivated supposed pro-police shifts. Note right away that the New York Times erases other possible explanations from the public record

NYT does not have a single person who tells reader an alternative viewpoint. All the “ordinary” people were taken from a political rally for a pro-police, centrist. None of the many candidates, organizers, voters, and survivors who work every day on non-police community safety.

Today, the New York Times published one of its most dishonest, biased, and dangerous pro-police articles that I have ever read. What's happening at the NYT is important, so I try my best to explain below why it’s so harmful.