Unsurprising that this US-centric, simplistic and intentionally provocative take is getting love on Australian politico-media Twitter. Further evidence of how an online intelligentsia is detached from the very rational interests of the average person. 1/ https://www.niemanlab.org/2020/12/defund-the-crime-beat/

People in the real world care about criminal activity in their world. They want to be informed about it. Gang violence, child abuse, drug abuse, violent extremism, cyber crime, fraud. These things have massive, terrible effects on individuals and communities every day. 2/

There is a class of very online, politically engaged intellectuals who are not interested in crime reporting. Totally fine, genuinely! Stick with the FT, the New York Review of Books and Twitter! But understand the limits of your perspective. 3/

Of course there can be race and class problems in crime reporting. Those should be addressed. But it’s silly to say that’s an inherent problem. So easy (and important) to avoid those problems. And many crime types transcend class and race (see: DV and abuse). 4/

Anyway, has been fascinating to switch from politics to crime reporting. Twitter doesn’t care about crime and crime doesn’t care about Twitter. Now I’m going back to my day off. 5/5