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

Nicola Mastrorocco & Arianna Ornaghi

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy2025https://doi.org/10.1257/pol.20230356article
AJG 3ABDC A*
Weight
0.66

Abstract

Do US 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 ownership decreases 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. (JEL D83, G34, H76, K42, L13, L82)

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https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1257/pol.20230356

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@article{nicola2025,
  title        = {{Who Watches the Watchmen? Local News and Police Behavior in the United States}},
  author       = {Nicola Mastrorocco & Arianna Ornaghi},
  journal      = {American Economic Journal: Economic Policy},
  year         = {2025},
  doi          = {https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1257/pol.20230356},
}

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

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Evidence weight

0.66

Balanced mode · F 0.40 / M 0.15 / V 0.05 / R 0.40

F · citation impact0.80 × 0.4 = 0.32
M · momentum0.75 × 0.15 = 0.11
V · venue signal0.50 × 0.05 = 0.03
R · text relevance †0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20

† Text relevance is estimated at 0.50 on the detail page — for your query’s actual relevance score, open this paper from a search result.