Talk:Net neutrality and 'Restoring Internet freedom'

"After being relatively stable for the 50 years from 1925 to 1975, the incarceration rate in the US shot up by a factor of five in the last quarter of the twentieth century. This increase in incarcerations occurred without a corresponding change in crime rates. This change has been explained as a product of decisions by mainstream commercial broadcasters to focus on the police blotter while firing nearly all their investigative journalists. A few popular programs like “60 Minutes” were exceptions.[14]" That's interesting, though it's not exactly clear why an increase in crime reporting would cause an increase in incarcerations. The Wikipedia article states that high crime reporting is associated with increased sentence length, but that's not very specific. What is the causal relationship here? AP295 (discuss • contribs) 19:17, 23 April 2024 (UTC)


 * Please excuse: To me, it's fairly clear. It might be better stated in the Wikiversity article on Confirmation bias and conflict: Walter Lippmann in his 1922 book on Public Opinion said, "The real environment is altogether too big, too complex, and too fleeting for direct acquaintance" between people and their environment. Each person constructs a pseudo-environment that is a subjective, biased, and necessarily abridged mental image of the world that is unique to that individual and evolves over time. People "live [and act] in the same world, but they think and feel [and decide] in different ones." The increase in incarceration rate visible in that plot seems to have been a product of the corruption trilogy, mentioned in that article.


 * Does this make sense? Thanks, DavidMCEddy (discuss • contribs) 01:01, 24 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Not really. Do you mean that crime reporting increases crime itself by power of suggestion, the public's tendency to report/convict others of crime, or by some other mechanism? AP295 (discuss • contribs) 04:54, 24 April 2024 (UTC)


 * I just added the following:
 * The incarceration rate is a function of public perception of crime, which is unrelated to the crime rate, at least in the US between 1925 and 2014.
 * How's this?
 * DavidMCEddy (discuss • contribs) 13:18, 24 April 2024 (UTC)
 * That doesn't answer my question. I am asking how public perception of crime, or rather, crime reporting, affects incarceration rates. By what means? Your sentence also is not strictly true, as incarceration rate and public perception of crime cannot be entirely independent of actual crime. AP295 (discuss • contribs) 11:44, 25 April 2024 (UTC)
 * To be clear, I'm not saying that crime reporting does not affect incarceration rates. I'm just curious how. This is not obvious to me. To rephrase the question once more, how does crime reporting increase incarceration rate? I can speculate, and certainly it does not seem an implausible claim, but presumably the authors of these studies have suggested why this is the case. AP295 (discuss • contribs) 11:48, 25 April 2024 (UTC)


 * Thanks. I added another paragraph plus a few references. I think it can be documented that the crime rate would fall dramatically if we had 100% public financing for quality child care from pregnancy through age 17. In addition, the entire population would be healthier, per, and after a few decades, the entire education system would become free, paid by productivity increases we would not have without it, according to substantial research by Eric Hanushek and co-workers. However, none of that incarcerations, unless we actually changed the structure of the media. For moore on the media, see Information is a public good: Designing experiments to improve government. Hope this helps. DavidMCEddy (discuss • contribs) 13:30, 25 April 2024 (UTC)
 * ??? AP295 (discuss • contribs) 13:38, 25 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Might those works that you cited be available online? If they're not freely available and you don't mind taking the time, could you quote the relevant portions so that I and other readers might understand why increased crime reporting supposedly increases incarceration rates? I presume there's a study to support this, and I'm curious how they came to this conclusion. AP295 (discuss • contribs) 00:57, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

The logic is fairly simple and documented in the section on "Editorial policies of major media" of the Wikipedia article on United States incarceration rate:


 * 1) Everyone thinks they know more than they do (overconfidence).
 * 2) Everyone prefers information and sources consistent with preconceptions (confirmation bias).
 * 3) Major media everywhere exploit this to please people who control most of the money for the media.
 * 4) Around 1975, big money bought up most of the major commercial broadcasters in the US and fired nearly all the investigative journalists and replaced them with the police blotter. The public thought that crime was out of control, when there had been no substantive change in crime. They voted in a generation of politicians devoted to getting tough on crime, and this is the result.

If you want to know more, might you have access to a good local library that could get copies of documents for you on something like interlibrary loan? The municipal library where I live claimed to offer such services, but when I tried to access them, I got nowhere. Finally, I complained loudly enough that I got the attention of someone in the library. Now I can check out books for free on interlibrary loan and get free copies of book chapters and articles from newspapers and refereed academic journals. You could also try The Wikipedia Library. I've gotten some things via them, but it's been difficult.

Hope this helps. DavidMCEddy (discuss • contribs) 01:52, 8 May 2024 (UTC)


 * I understand now. It occurred to me some time ago that the human mind is probably not well adapted to television. Events in the news are likely interpreted as though the viewer witnessed these events firsthand. People end up with a distorted sense of risk and of social trends in general. This has nothing to do with (1) and (2) per se. People are simply being misinformed, not necessarily by falsehoods but by a biased sample of information, delivered with false pretenses of objectivity. AP295 (discuss • contribs) 03:24, 8 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Granted, the people most likely to respond to this sort of propaganda are those already predisposed toward the intended response. Yet I don't view this so much as ignorance (or to use your phrase, "confirmation bias"). Rather, the media is simply endorsing a course of action that some people are already inclined to take. Perhaps I'm just splitting hairs. AP295 (discuss • contribs) 03:39, 8 May 2024 (UTC)