John Oliver discusses the outlets that cover crime, the incentives that drive them, the flawed sources they rely upon, and an alternative name for Miss Piggy. 

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It's genuinely impressive that this crime dog taught a whole generation how to be narcs, while simultaneously, dressing like he's about to jerk it in the back of a movie theater.

Specifically, we're gonna talk about how crime is covered by the news, because the news loves covering crime, sometimes seriously, and sometimes like this.

This is what Nedra's car looked like today.

Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike.

But you may want to start changing your ways.

I want that man on my TV all day, every day.

In fact, if you send NBC4 Washington's Pat Connors to Ukraine, I guarantee you it'll be sorted out tomorrow.

Vlad, Vlad, Vlad, Vlad, Vlad, Vlad, Vlad, Vlad, Vlad.

Now, you've undoubtedly noticed that crime makes up a significant part of your local news's programming.

But the scale of that coverage has a real impact.

Research has shown that viewing local TV news is related to increased fear of and concern about crime, and the TV news viewers are also more likely to support tougher crime policies.

Which does help explain why our perceptions of crime can sharply be at odds with the reality of it.

For over 30 years, Gallup has asked Americans whether they think the U.S.

Has more or less crime compared to the year before.

And in every year except for 1, the public has said that crime has increased, even as the actual crime rate has plummeted.

Now, interestingly, the 1 year that the majority said less was 2001, famously a year where everything was super chill, no drama, just vibes.

TV news leans hard on this could happen to you type of crime stories, which are designed to pull you in with the latest version being this.

Authorities continue to sound the alarm about the dangers of rainbow fentanyl.

Another warning about rainbow fentanyl, the deadly drug disguised as candy.

The colorful candy-like appearance is actually designed to appeal to young kids.

They're attractive, they're colorful, they look like candy.

Especially in the month of October, as Halloween fast approaches.

Okay, so first, Rainbow Fentanyl sounds like the title of a very special episode of My Little Pony.

But, second, while the idea of Rainbow Fentanyl being made to target kids sounds very scary, experts on narcotics have pointed out that those pills are almost certainly colored just to differentiate products, and it has nothing to do with marketing to kids at all, period, whatsoever.

Because kids, and this is true, are not an ideal customer base for expensive street drugs.

Because even if dealers were targeting trick-or-treaters with a first ones on the house strategy, where do you expect little Zeke to come up with the cash for the next 1?

Sure, he's got his weekly allowance, but he smacked his brother yesterday, so that's that dollar gone.

And the rest of his net worth is tied up in Lego store gift cards.

Maybe check back in 10 years when he gets prescribed Oxy after a lacrosse injury.

And look, that is not to say that opioid addiction among young people isn't a real issue.

It obviously is, but it doesn't help the conversation around that issue.

To have newscasters jumping on splashy, your kid's Halloween candy could be fentanyl stories, that even in this report, they half acknowledge his bullshit right at the very end.

Police departments warning parents to check the candy their kids bring home from trick-or-treating.

We don't want to have kids, who are taking pills that they think is candy and is really not.

There have been no instances of that happening.

I'm so glad you tacked that disclaimer on at the end there, though.

I'm sure that three-second debunk read over the station logo is exactly what everyone's gonna take away from that report, and definitely not the image of little hulks sticking their hands into bowls of Skittle-shaped smack.

But that instinct to run an eye-catching crime story without being skeptical of its sourcing is unfortunately incredibly common.

So given that, tonight, let's talk about crime reporting.

Specifically, the incentives driving the outlets that cover crime, the flawed sources that they rely upon, and the greater harm that it can do to all of us.

if it bleeds, it leads, has been around for decades, but the philosophy really took hold around the 1970s, when 2 local stations in Philadelphia pioneered the eyewitness and action news formats, which leaned heavily on crime news.

As 1 anchor there explained, crime was cheap to cover, it was easy to cover.

The assignment desk said to the cameraman, you shoot the scene, you shoot the blood, you shoot victims, whatever they got, and you can do it in 20 seconds.

The most meaningful stories are rarely the fastest or the cheapest.

And I'm not just saying that because I host very long news stories that are also expensive to produce the comedy show.

Nonetheless, those formats quickly spread to 200 markets around the country.

And by the 1990s, CNN even did a whole piece wondering if all that crime coverage was necessarily a good thing.

Crime news can look a lot like entertainment.

1 Los Angeles station, a study showed, spent over half its newscasts on crime.

Everyone who wanted to commit suicide to do it on...

In a public place where the media could be present, we would have like a TV show called Suicide

But, no, not to step on that man's creative pursuits here, there is already primetime programming where people kill themselves for our entertainment.

It sure feels like this sport maybe shouldn't exist.

So, people have been raising the alarm about our obsession with crime news for a while now.

But it's clearly been hard for news outlets to give it up, as they are constantly making space for stories about crimes, be they major or incredibly minor, often illustrated with mug shots.

The New York Daily News even has mug shot galleries on their website right now, with titles like, Criminally Bad Hair Days and Babes Behind Bars.

And the thing is, the faces that get shown can compound existing inequities in our justice system.

A study a few years ago, here in New York, found that while around a quarter of the city's population is black, black people made up for half of all arrests, and three-quarters of criminals shown on the news, which is clearly going to distort public perception.

And while outlets may justify reporting on sensational arrest as part of the public interest, far too often, whether due to a lack of time, or resources, or even inclination, they don't follow up on what the outcomes of those cases are, which can seriously impact people's lives.

He and his brother were accused of sexual assault in 2012 by a woman who not only recanted her accusations, but pled guilty to filing a false Police Report.

The problem is, their charges had already made the local news, which then never got around to mentioning that the charges were dismissed.

And years later, with uncorrected stories still sitting on news sites, Darcel was having to make calls like these.

Did we do a story where the charges were dropped, too?

We should've had a follow-up story where the charges were dropped.

And if I could just talk to the Jim there for a second.

Hey, Jim, I don't know if that's short for James, Jimothy or Jimiriquai, but either way, Jim, you're paper goofed.

You can't just report the start of a story and ignore the end.

Imagine if the news hadn't covered the end of Balloon Boy.

The balloon has left my immediate line of vision, so who really gives a shit?

So the news media can be overly reliant on eye-catching crime stories that are quick and easy to turn around.

And the speed with which the Daily Crime Beat operates actually leads to 1 of the biggest issues in crime coverage, which is that it often relies heavily on a single source.

It is why, if you watch the TV news, for any length of time, you will undoubtedly hear 1 particular phrase.

The Lovington police say they know who is responsible for a prank at a local park.

Police in Fairfield say an officer was attacked with bear spray.

It's a phrase that you constantly hear from the mouths of news reporters.

It's right up there with, this just in, or back to you, or I apologize for the accent I did on Cinco de Mayo.

And look, there is obviously nothing wrong with calling the police to ask questions.

When you're working on a deadline, you can't always reach arrested civilians or their attorneys who sometimes don't even want to talk with you anyway.

Many larger departments have even set up robust media relations divisions.

County Sheriff's Department has 42 people on its information bureau at an annual cost of 4.8 million.

And the LAPD spends over 3000000 for 25 people in similar units, which is already a little telling, because While a certain amount of spending is necessary, you don't spend that much on PR if things are going great.

For context, all those budgets combined equal just 1 month's salary for Ezra Miller's publicist.

Even smaller police departments can have public information officers, or PIOs.

And as this 1 proudly notes, his press releases can make it straight to air.

Something major happens, whether it's a shooting or some major car accident, whatever it is, you go back to your office, you type up this long press release, and you send it out to the public and all the news agencies.

Within minutes, you have reporters from all over the country calling you.

There's something strangely satisfying that when you put out that press release, Hours later, you're watching the news, and every station that's talking about your story is literally reading your press release word for word.

Okay, set aside the fact that everything about this man answers the question, what if Fred Durst but worse?

That claim that the police's version of events can be parodied verbatim in the press is genuinely alarming.

Although I cannot really fault him for being excited at seeing his work read word for word on TV.

Ask my writers, and they'll tell you they experience the exact same thrill whenever I read 1 of their little jizz jokes.

And by the way, hey Chrissy, did you like hearing me say your McGruff dog jerking it joke?

-♪ ♪ -♪ But the fact reporters will echo PIOs does explain certain things, like the ubiquity of phrases like, officer involved shooting.

You see it in police accounts all the time, but it's a weird term for reporters to repeat because it deliberately omits crucial information about how the officer was involved.

If you went to someone's house for dinner, and they said, tonight, there is a rat-involved dinner, you'd justifiably have some follow-up questions.

Is the chef being controlled by a tiny French rat under his hat?

Or are we gonna be on an episode of Kitchen Nightmares?

All 3 are technically rat-involved, but some options are easier to live with than others.

And honestly, police departments don't always need a PIO to push their narrative, as outlets will sometimes just grab shit from a law enforcement agency's social media.

For instance, police love posting evidence from busts that they've conducted, like this 1, which a Texas news station not only shared on their own Facebook page, but even included on their evening broadcast.

A search warrant executed Monday has left 3 people behind bars.

The Tannahop Police Department has released information on the raid.

Among the items seized were 2 pounds of marijuana, illegally possessed prescription pills, drug paraphernalia, packaging materials, guns, and cash.

Now, if you don't really think about what you are looking at there, I guess that seems like a story, right?

Because as many quickly pointed out, when you examine that photo, you realize not only is that not a lot of drugs, there is way less cash there than they are going out of their way to make it look.

1 commenter on the station's post said, -"Sick, this is Play School's My First Dealer set." -$70 total With another adding, -"Who was the drug dealer?

El Cheapo." -$70 total And that speaks to the fact that there can be a gap, sometimes small, but sometimes massive, between the story police are telling everyone and the story that actually happened.

Because cop stories can, for a lot of reasons, turn out to be very wrong in ways both serious and incredibly petty.

Take the trend of cops claiming mistreatment at the hands of fast food employees, which local news can be only too happy to gobble right up.

A possible hate crime against police is being investigated right now at a Shake Shack in downtown Manhattan.

Sources tell CBS2 3 officers became sick after having shakes from the restaurant tonight.

Police suspect an employee may have contaminated the drinks with bleach.

The latent police sergeant ordered a sub and a lemonade from this Subway, but after taking a few sips of his drink, he quickly found out he got much more than what he paid for.

He was having a hard time maintaining his body.

What caused those side effects, police say, turned out to be a double dose of illegal narcotics.

DJ, a local law enforcement officer, told Eyewitness News he suspects someone at McDonald's took a bite from his sandwich before he completed the sale.

Tonight, a McDonald's in Junction city is investigating after a police officer found insulting words written on his coffee.

The F-word has been blurred out in this image, of course, but you can see the word pig written right below it.

Okay, so there is a lot there, but real quick, there was no bleach in the shakes, no drugs in the lemonade, the cop with the sandwich later admitted he'd simply forgotten he took a bite from it, and the 1 with the coffee admitted he'd ridden fucking pig on his own cup, which is a serious act of self-loathing, unless, that is, you are Miss Piggy, in which case, it's a sleigh.

She's got fashion to work and frog dick to slurp.

And that speaks to 1 of the major problems with deferring to police.

Because As many of you have undoubtedly been yelling at your TV, like I am a Wheel of Fortune contestant who cannot solve the puzzle, police lie.

And they lie a lot, as you've seen on this show.

They've lied to get search warrants to conduct raids, and to get confessions during interrogations, and they even lie under oath.

So often, in fact, here in New York, it came to be known as testy lying.

All of which should be more than enough for the word of the police to be treated with immense skepticism, rather than repeated verbatim.

Take the notorious press release the Minneapolis police put out following the murder of George Floyd, titled, Man Dies After Medical Incident During Police Interaction.

What you may not know is, it was picked up almost word for word by local news the next morning.

We do begin this morning with developing news.

A man is dead after what police are calling a medical distress after being handcuffed.

Officers were responding to a forgery in progress.

It happened on the 3700 block of Chicago Avenue South.

When they arrived, officers found a man they believed to be the suspect sitting inside a car.

Officers eventually got him handcuffed, which is when he appeared to have the medical issue.

The suspect was taken to the hospital, where he died a short time later.

Now, obviously, that is a hugely self-serving statement from the police, because by saying George Floyd died because of medical distress, their role was completely erased.

His medical distress, and I'm using the biggest air quotes humanly possible here, was the result of an officer pressing his knee into his neck for 9 minutes.

Repeating that claim by the police is an act of malpractice akin to Walter Cronkite saying, JFK died of a headache today.

Sure, it's not technically wrong, but it's the understatement of the fucking century.

The point is, it was only after the release of cell phone footage recorded by a brave 17-year-old girl that that police narrative fell apart.

Otherwise, that bullshit press release might well have been the version of events that everybody heard.

An investigation last year of police killings in California found at least a dozen examples of initial police statements misrepresenting events, with reports citing vague medical emergencies without disclosing that officers had caused the emergencies through their use of force.

And in most instances, media outlets repeated the police version of events with little skepticism, which clearly isn't good.

There is a time and a place for media outlets to operate without skepticism.

And we all know it's the cover of health magazines.

Not an ounce of critical thinking on this extremely real cover that includes the headlines, lose 9 waist inches in 21 days, and news a potato a day ups weight loss by 340 percent.

And there are times where the trust that reporters place in some police sources have been particularly egregious.

Just take what happened in Chicago after the police shot teenager Laquan McDonald 16 times.

In their initial coverage, multiple local outlets featured interviews with 1 particular person on the scene, whose version of events heavily favored the police.

I don't know what his mental state was, but he wasn't dropping the knife and he was coming at the officer.

You obviously aren't going to sit down and have a cup of coffee with him.

He is a very serious threat to the officers and he leaves them no choice at that point but to defend themselves.

Well, that's a very detailed picture painted by Palm Beach Potato Head there.

First, while he sounds like an eyewitness, he was not there for the incident.

Second, videotape later revealed that that story he was telling was complete horseshit.

Police shot McDonald's when he was walking away from them.

But finally, reporters should have known to take anything that guy said with a massive grain of salt, because Pat Camden was the spokesperson for the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police, which functions as part police union, part special interest lobby group.

His only agenda was to protect cops, and it was way too easy for this little mustachioed weirdo to hear that there was a shooting, drive to the scene, jump in front of cameras, and grab control of the narrative.

1 analysis found that in a four-year time span, he provided an initial version of events for 35 police shootings.

And in 15 cases, crucial aspects of his statements were later proved to be false or misleading.

If you get caught cheating at 1 casino, they ban you from every casino.

This guy peddled bullshit to the press 15 times, and yet somehow, his picture wasn't pinned behind every news desk in the country with the warning, -"Do not ask this man about anything." -$50, 000.

So, so, so often, it seems like news outlets will be serving their communities much better if they weren't quite so trusting when it came to what police tell them.

And to see a lot of what I've talked about tonight in 1 place, just Take what happened in Brookside, Alabama, where a few years ago, local news was excitedly reporting on a new initiative from their police department, which police said was getting real results.

We tell you stories all the time about crime going up, but we got some good news.

The town of Brookside says they're seeing crime go down.

Brookside is not a big town, but its narcotics interdiction team, they've been busy.

Our number 1 goal is to not prosecute people.

We want to save lives, we want to keep our citizens safe, we want to keep people who are coming to Brookside safe and enjoy our town.

It's part local news fluff, part propaganda, and something bordering on a tourism ad from Officer Teddy Ruxpin there.

But think about it, it's a bit strange that 1 tiny town in Alabama had suddenly become a hotbed for drug smuggling, right?

And I will say, to its credit, 1 local station did dig a little deeper, airing a report about the fact that a weird amount of drivers were questioning the tickets written by that police department.

A story, incidentally, that led that department to tell employees that anyone talking to that reporter would be fired.

But it wasn't until 2 years later that an in-depth investigation from AL.com revealed what had actually been happening, and that is that Brookside, a town of just 1, 200 people, was having its finances rocket-fueled by tickets and aggressive policing, with bullshit traffic tickets being issued at a truly ridiculous rate.

Brookside dragged so many people into court that police had to direct traffic on court days.

Money from fines and forfeitures soared more than 600 percent, to the point where it made up half the town budget.

It got to the point where the police department was taking in $487 for every man, woman, and child.

And spending it on, among other things, a SWAT team, a jail, a fleet of unmarked cars, and 2 drug-sniffing dogs, 1 of which they named, and this is true, K9 cash.

Here is that dog, and I will say, he does look like a canine cash, and that's not a compliment, bad dog.

--LAUGHTER --But the point is, what was actually happening in Brookside turned out to be a pretty far cry from the initial coverage of, hey, great news!

This small-town police force is apparently Miami Vice all of a sudden.

And the thing is, by presenting police uncritically, you're not just helping them dodge accountability, you're giving them a huge lobbying platform.

Right now, you don't have to look far to find cops on TV suggesting that the fix for any rising crime is to undo the criminal justice reforms of the past few years, and to give them more money.

Even the current Rainbow Fentanyl Scare started with a DEA press release, which happened to drop just as Congress was in the midst of budget negotiations.

Everyone picked up that story, and what do you know, last week, Chuck Schumer announced his intention to allocate nearly 300 million more dollars to law enforcement so that they can fight the scourge of Rainbow Fentanyl.

And look, I'm not saying all crime reporting is bad.

There is some incredible coverage out there.

And a lot of what I told you tonight came from great investigative reporting.

But the daily crime beat, whether from lack of resources, lack of scrutiny, or lack of follow-through, far too often, takes police at their word, and not as an interest group who should be treated as such.

Well, the police could change the ways that they both behave and communicate, but given that that's not gonna be happening anytime soon, it unfortunately falls to the rest of us.

For news outlets, they could try and snap out of their automatic deference to police, which is actually possible.

Just watch what happened when a political web series from The Hill invited on a public defender to discuss the case of Jayln Walker, who was killed by police after fleeing a traffic stop.

Watch her push back when the host seems a little too eager to accept the police line.

There's no world, no traffic infraction, the punishment is death.

So there's no reason why 8 officers should choose to go and shoot him to death.

I guess I just don't have a lot of sympathy in this particular case, although I do in a lot of other.

a lot of sympathy in this case where he was shot 60 times?

After leading the police on a high speed chase and returning fire?

Less, less, because too often media reports on what are police stories as though it is the ultimate truth.

We see too many, too many discrepancies for us to consistently lean on what the police say is the truth.

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