Tuesday, November 20, 2007

. . . Did It Make a Sound?

Just did a very quick tour of the major news sites looking for coverage of Jim Austin's report yesterday on the nation's prison population that we covered here. Reuters ran the story on Monday, and the Boston Globe picked it up, not carrying its own. Looked at CNN, CBS, USA Today, WaPo, NYTimes, LATimes, the usual WI papers, AP, WTOP in DC . . . nada. Maybe you saw something else so let me know.

In light of studies showing how little the public pays attention to crim just policy news and that influencing "influencers" really doesn't have the impact on policy that we have always thought, at some point we're going to have to ask ourselves how many more resources we'll put into these press events rather than the policy and PR infrastructures that have had more impact for conservative policy proposals and proponents. Regurgitating the same points and findings over and over year after year sounds way too much like "if you keep doing the same thing . . . ."

2 comments:

Eileen Conway said...

BBC News also caught it in last night's broadcast, and on its website today.

Michael Connelly said...

We can almost always count on the BBC to do a better job covering American policy than American media. Thanks.