Look, I’m critical of this kind of coverage and how it warps our politics and shapes policy outcomes, but I think that’s going too far in describing at least how a lot of local journalists approach their job. There is a “if it bleeds, it leads” quality to the nightly news (the “Eyewitness News” format) that reinforces perceptions of crime. The stories are straightforward to write and draw traffic/attention, so in an industry that looks to fill time/column space, the economics of these stories contribute to their proliferation.

But a lot of news bias in our local papers and television stations is less a particular agenda of any single journalist or outlet, and their bias towards who talks to them (and who they view as a legitimate source to talk to). They are also conditioned to see “sides” of a story. Crime stories, as far as they are concerned, only have two sides: the police and the criminal, and the latter isn’t talking to them, so they only report the police narrative, which reinforces the ability of the police to write their narrative.

There is also just the inescapable reality that the corps of journalists who cover Providence are overwhelmingly white, and virtually none (whether white or not) are actually from the city. They simply don’t have contact with or contacts within the city, and so they can’t tell complex stories about the city. So when a shooting happens, they can only tell you the victim’s name and age, and can’t really delve into who that victim is/was as a person. In comparison, when a violent crime victim is not from Providence, coverage will often go a bit deeper.

The other problem is that a lot of journalists in local media do not provide analysis, but merely report what is said. Data-driven features take time to produce and are infrequent. But most “data” stories are because someone released a report, whether government as in OP’s link, or an advocacy group calling attention an issue, or as a marketing ploy for some company’s product (a lot of the rankings that get reported). Journalists are not very skeptical of these stories, and just report what is said in the report, the press release, or what some of their interviews say. But they generally won’t analyze the methodology or sourcing of such things, and tell their audiences if it’s any good.

The result is coverage that is biased towards anecdotes rather than data, biased towards what people say rather than what is actually occurring, and biased towards the loudest yellers and those with the resources and prestige to yell loudest.