Book Event - copaganda: how police and the media manipulate our news

“Copaganda” is a special kind of propaganda employed by police, prosecutors, and news media. It stokes fear of police-recorded crime and distorts society’s responses to it. As the United States incarcerates five times more people per capita than it did in 1970—despite record low crime rates—a sprawling and profitable punishment bureaucracy spends a lot of time and money to manipulate what we think that bureaucracy does and why.

Copaganda is all around us. When you hear on the radio that crime is up when it’s actually down—that’s copaganda. When your local TV station obsessively focuses on shoplifting by poor people while ignoring crimes of wage theft, tax evasion, and environmental pollution that harm far more people—that’s copaganda. When you hear on your daily podcast that there is a “shortage” of prison guards rather than too many people in prison—that’s copaganda. When your newspaper quotes an “expert” saying that more money…