Sometimes you sense that the mainstream media are running a propaganda campaign, but you can’t put your finger on specific examples. Well, here’s one:
When President Trump deployed National Guard troops to help fight crime in Washington, D.C., mainstream media outlets did not simply report on his actions, perhaps with commentary from his political supporters and opponents. Instead, the media went out of their way to tell their readers that D.C. crime already had been greatly reduced. Their clear message was that President Trump didn’t know what he was doing, and was needlessly deploying troops to address a problem that didn’t exist.
Of course, we have learned since that the D.C. numbers apparently were cooked to appear lower than they were. The police chief responsible has since resigned.
But at the time of the National Guard deployment, the media accepted the numbers uncritically and used them to bash Trump.
A public relations expert once told me that she didn’t believe that all the executives from leading mainstream media got together each morning to decide on a common script. But she said that the results were the same as if they had done so.
This certainly was the case with the “crime in down in D.C.” claim. Here are links to leading mainstream media websites all saying much the same thing. In many cases, the “same thing” seems to originate with the New York Times, so I’ve listed that outlet first. Other than the link to the Times, I’ve created links to new PDFs, to preserve the original mistaken articles in case they disappear from the media websites.
New York Times (“Trump Takes Control of D.C. Police, Citing ‘Bloodthirsty Criminals.’ But Crime Is Down”)
The Washington Post (“Crime in D.C. . . . is declining”)
ABC News (“Violent crime levels have decreased compared to years prior, down 26% since 2024, a 30-year low”)
CBS News (“Violent crime has dropped 26% from last year in Washington, D.C. ”)
NBC News (“Trump’s unprecedented takeover of D.C. police comes as crime is down, figures show”)
PBS (“statistics show decline in crime”)
