Copaganda
eBook - ePub

Copaganda

How Police and the Media Manipulate Our News

  1. English
  2. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  3. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

Copaganda

How Police and the Media Manipulate Our News

About this book

In this groundbreaking expose essential for understanding rising authoritarianism, award-winning civil rights lawyer Alec Karakatsanis introduces the concept of “Copaganda.”


Copaganda is a special kind of propaganda employed by police, prosecutors, and news media to stoke fear of police-recorded crime and distort society’s response to it.

What readers will discover:


  • How mass media manipulates our perception of what keeps us safe.

  • Why fear of poor people, strangers, immigrants, unhoused people, and people of color is deliberately cultivated.

  • The ways this fear leads to authoritarian repression, inequality, and massive profits for the punishment bureaucracy.

Why it matters:
For readers of Naomi Klein and Noam Chomsky, Copaganda shows how modern news coverage fuels insecurity and distracts us from policies that would truly improve lives and make us safer—like reducing inequality, expanding housing, and investing in healthcare, early childhood education, and climate-friendly city planning.

Hidden in plain sight:


  • When your local TV station obsessively reports on shoplifting but ignores wage theft, tax evasion, and environmental pollution.

  • When podcasts talk about a “shortage” of prison guards rather than too many people in prison.

  • When newspapers quote “experts” calling for more money for police and prisons despite scientific evidence to the contrary.

About the author:
Recognized by Teen Vogue as “one of the most prominent voices” on issues of law and justice, Alec Karakatsanis combines sharp legal expertise, trenchant political analysis, and humorous storytelling to transform the way we consume information.


The result:
A hopeful path forward—towards a healed humanity and a media system invested in real public safety and equality.


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Yes, you can access Copaganda by Alec Karakatsanis in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Politics & International Relations & Civil Rights in Law. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Contents
  4. Introduction: What Is Copaganda?
  5. 1. What Is Crime News?
  6. 2. The Volume of Crime News
  7. 3. Moral Panics and the Selective Curation of Anecdote
  8. 4. Policing Public Relations
  9. 5. Whose Perspective? How Sources Shape the News
  10. 6. Academic Copaganda
  11. 7. How Bad Academic Research Becomes News
  12. 8. Keywords of Copaganda: Smuggling Ideology into the News
  13. 9. Copaganda Against Change
  14. 10. Progressives Want a Pro-Crime Hellscape
  15. 11. What We Don’t Know Can Hurt Us
  16. 12. Polls and Making Cops Look Good
  17. 13. The Bad Apple
  18. 14. The Big Deception
  19. 15. Distracting from Material Conditions
  20. 16. Resisting Copaganda
  21. Notes
  22. Acknowledgments
  23. Index
  24. About the Author
  25. A Note About Royalties
  26. Publishing in the Public Interest
  27. Copyright