The Other McCain

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Journalists Against Journalism: Reporter in Crime-Ridden Philadelphia Criticized for Reporting About City’s Crime Wave

Posted on | March 17, 2023 | 1 Comment

If you live near Philadelphia, you almost certainly know Steve Keeley, one of the city’s most popular television reporters, who has been at WTXF-TV (Fox 29) for nearly three decades. The man is a local legend, and in recent years has been covering the outrageous epidemic of criminal violence that has plagued Philadelphia since Soros-backed Larry Krasner was elected the city’s district attorney. As recently as 2014, Philly had fewer than 250 homicides annually, but Krasner was elected DA in 2017 and the homicide rate began rising almost immediately: 353 in 2018 and the same number the next year. Then in 2020, the city well and truly earned the nickname “Killadelphia,” as there were 499 homicides, an astonishing 41% increase in a single year. But 2021 was even worse — indeed, the 562 homicides in 2021 were the most in the city’s history — and the next year, the total fell just slightly from that all-time record, as 516 were victims of homicide in “Killadelphia” in 2022. That’s just murders, you understand, and doesn’t take into account all the armed robberies, aggravated assaults, carjackings, etc. How bad is crime in Philadelphia? Literally worse than Chicago, at least on a per-capita basis.

Obviously, if your city suddenly turns into a chaotic slaughterhouse of lawless violence, that’s a pretty important story for a local journalist to cover, and Steve Keeley has been covering it relentlessly. Covering it so well, in fact, that a bunch of weenies and wusses in Philadelphia’s journalism hive are complaining that Keeley is covering too much crime:

Philadelphia magazine analyzed a study of the city’s media and concluded that Mr. Keeley’s station devoted far more stories to local crime than any other news outlet. In a follow-up piece in the magazine, several critics came forward with negative takes on Mr. Keeley, including some of his media colleagues.
Cherri Gregg, a longtime radio journalist in Philadelphia who now hosts a show for the city’s NPR-affiliated WHYY, told the magazine that Mr. Keeley’s work “definitely makes me cringe” and that “[c]rime coverage can be very harmful and scares people.”
She said she feared that minority communities, specifically men, could be hurt by such journalism. She did not express concern for people in those same communities who have been victimized by crime, nor did she say the reporting was inaccurate.
Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Jenice Armstrong chimed in as well, calling Mr. Keeley’s Twitter feed “disturbing,” but not because of the constant crime in the city.

Let the reader guess what Cherri Gregg and Jenice Armstrong have in common (I checked; your guess is correct), but beyond the obvious fact of their membership in the same demographic group that’s committing at least 80% of the violent crime in Philly, they have something else in common: Neither one of them is anywhere near as experienced as Steve Keeley in covering actual news, as opposed to engaging in the kind of thinly-disguised progressive activism that is considered “journalism” at liberal outlets like NPR and the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Dana Pico’s been on the “Killadelphia” beat for years and has a few thoughts on the anti-journalism tendencies of liberal journalists.



 

 

Category: Crime, Media Bias, Pennsylvania

Comments

One Response to “Journalists Against Journalism: Reporter in Crime-Ridden Philadelphia Criticized for Reporting About City’s Crime Wave”

  1. “I’ll take ‘Things you won’t find in the Inquirer’ for $200, Alex.” – THE FIRST STREET JOURNAL.
    March 18th, 2023 @ 9:10 am

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