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- Verify information
- Provide context to your readers
- FOIA and requesting data
- Working with data
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[ Verify information ]
While reporting
In The Elements of Journalism, Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel refer to journalism as a “discipline of verification.” But, in breaking news situations, sometimes verifying information can be tricky.
When there’s breaking news, you may not have time to verify information. In those moments, make it clear where you are getting your information from. If it’s from the police, say so.
At the same time, police accounts in the hours after a crime may be incomplete or inaccurate, The Associated Press Stylebook notes in its section on criminal justice. Because of this, the AP recommends asking police officials how they know what they’re saying is true. If you don’t know or can’t confirm a key detail, say so in the story.
It’s important to confirm the facts of your story with multiple reliable sources. Those include police reports, but can also include eyewitness accounts, the victims and their relatives, video recordings from nearby businesses and court documents and filings. Ideally, don’t solely rely on information from police and prosecutors.
Following up is also key. Follow up on stories in the days and weeks after the initial incident because, in addition to keeping readers updated and staying present in the community, it allows you to further verify the information. The AP recommends you update readers if police change what they say.
On social media
Verification is also important on social media, where information can spread quickly.
To inform the public as soon as possible, some reporters post to social media as the incident unfolds, before they publish a story online. Other reporters wait to post on social media until their story is published. In either case, you should hold what you post on social media to the same standards as the rest of your work.
Verify all information you find on social media. Because social media platforms don’t confirm users’ identities, you have to be sure that the information you use is accurate — especially in the age of generative AI. The AP recommends you try to find the original source of the post and ask how and when they wrote the post, took the picture or recorded the video. For images, it’s helpful to use reverse image search to find other places the image appeared online.
[ Provide context to your readers ]
Understanding systemic issues
Before you can properly report on crime, you must have an understanding of the underlying systemic issues. But alongside that, you should use brief explanations and references to these issues – whether legal, historic or societal – to contextualize your reporting.
Incorporating data
Covering crime has long consisted of jarring headlines and sensationalist stories, which benefit no one. Incorporating data into your reporting is one of the simplest ways to contextualize what you’re saying. For example, if you’re reporting on a murder, see how often murders of this type happen in your area. Compare what has happened now to how often it happens in the past.
See Working with data for more information.
Bringing in experts
Criminologists make excellent sources for crime reporting. They will likely be able to provide context to crime trends. While no one can tell you outright why people commit crime, or why crime rates are going down, a criminologist working in your area likely knows what actions are being taken and how that reflects in the crime rates.
Talk to a criminologist or other expert on every crime story when you can. Try to speak with an expert whenever possible. A criminologist or other expert can help you understand context and larger trends, which can in turn help you avoid sensationalizing.
If you’re working on a long-term story, there’s a bigger window to find experts on your specific topic. Reach out to a lawyer, or a youth rehabilitation program leader or a policy expert, for example.
But if you have a tight turnaround, as many breaking news stories do, have a criminologist or two that you can call. Check your local universities, they may have criminologists on staff or a criminology program that may be willing to help you. See who is willing to take a quick last-minute phone call every now and then, which could greatly improve the outcome of your reporting.
See Reflect the diversity of your community for more information.
How context improves a story
If your story relies on people’s fear, then it’s not a well-reported story. The goal of criminal justice journalism is to take what’s going on in the community you cover, and translate that to the benefit of members of that community.
Adding context avoids relying on sensationalism, which in turn avoids causing harm. See Do no harm for more information.
[ FOIA and requesting data ]
The Freedom of Information Act and Public Information Act(s)
The Freedom of Information Act gives you the right to get information from U.S. government agencies, with certain exceptions. Not all federal government records are subject to FOIA – the federal U.S. Courts, The White House, and Congress are exempt.
At the state level, every public records law is different. See below in Resources to find a state’s public information law. Cite FOIA when requesting federal information, and cite your state’s law when requesting state-level information.
Requesting data and information
Before you send your information request, check online to ensure that the information you need isn’t publicly available. Once you’ve done that, found the agency you’ll be requesting from and how you will be contacting them, it’s time to send the request.
When formulating your request, be as specific as possible. Narrow your request with any dates, names, report numbers – anything that will simplify the request and narrow the search. The more specific you can be, the less likely a request may be rejected or contested. When requesting datasets, explicitly state the format you want. If you don’t want a PDF, get more specific about how the data is presented.
In some cases, journalists can receive a fee waiver for the costs their request incurs. Include a request for a fee waiver in your initial request if the information will be published, and why it will be in the public’s interest.
If you are charged for your request, ask for an itemized list of costs. This makes it easier to adjust the request to cut down on unnecessary fees.
If your request is denied, read through and identify why. See if there is anything you can push back on – state laws have different information availability, so know the laws for your state.
Resources
The National Freedom of Information Coalition lists the information laws for each state. Sample requests for each state are here.
The Open Government Guide has a state-by-state breakdown of laws.
IRE has a guide of strategies for requesting information from hesitant agencies.
FOIA.gov has a tool to find what agency would best serve your request.
[ Working with data ]
Whenever possible, reinforce your story by using relevant data to provide context and examine trends.
When looking at crime trends, go back far enough to give your readers the full picture. Use at least five years of data, but it can often be useful to go back even further. Data from the years of the COVID-19 pandemic, for example, are an aberration in many datasets; it is often useful to go back further than 2020. Use data to put things in a historic context. Violent crime rates are at historic lows in the U.S. as of 2026, at levels not seen since the 1960s, according to FBI data.
Keep in mind that crime data is not a neutral measure of crime. What shows up in any police dataset is shaped by enforcement decisions, agency priorities and which incidents get reported in the first place. Roughly half of violent crime victims never tell police, according to the National Crime Victimization Survey, and reporting rates for many property crimes are even lower. The same caution applies to arrest figures. Arrests measure police activity, not criminal activity. A jurisdiction with more officers, more proactive enforcement or different priorities will produce more arrests for the same underlying behavior.
See the Data section of this website for a catalogue of databases that are useful in criminal justice reporting. In addition, see the Data Guides section for information and walkthroughs of larger and more complex databases.
Understand the data
Understand the data you are working with. This means fully understanding the data that is there and understanding its limitations. Is the data complete? What is and isn’t included in the data? How was it collected?
As an example, in 2021 the FBI replaced its decades-old Uniform Crime Report with a more detailed program called the National Incident-Based Reporting System, or NIBRS, but thousands of police agencies did not make the switch in time. As a result, the FBI’s 2021 estimates were missing data from agencies covering about a third of the U.S. population, including the New York and Los Angeles police departments, making national year-over-year comparisons across that period unreliable.
Look for issues in your data. Common problems include inconsistent entries (the same officer’s name spelled three different ways, charges labeled “BURGLARY,” “Burglary” and “burglary” in different rows), missing fields and “unknown” catch-alls that hide whatever wasn’t collected well. Look for geocoding quirks where incidents are logged at the precinct station or the “100 block” of a street instead of the actual address.
When you spot something odd, don’t fix it silently. Document what you found, decide how you’re going to handle it and be ready to explain that decision in your story or methodology. The Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) network maintains tipsheets on common pitfalls and is worth a look before you start any data project.
Interview your data, just like you would a person or source. Develop a list of questions you want answered and then work through queries that can help answer those questions. Be on the lookout for outliers, trends and other interesting facets of the data.
Weigh the credibility of your data. Data can be unreliable, so err on the side of skepticism. Consider how the data was collected and by whom. Look for multiple sources of data and take its historical context into account. If the data seems off, trust your instincts and investigate. Compare it to similar datasets and reach out to the creator to discuss potential issues. For crime data, reach out to police for assistance contextualizing.
Don’t use data or numbers that you don’t fully understand. When you don’t understand something in a dataset, ask whoever maintains the data. Many datasets come with a data dictionary that will help define columns and more. But don’t hesitate to call the owner of the dataset with questions.
Local data quality varies wildly. Some cities publish detailed open data portals with daily updates and incident-level records. Others release nothing without a public records request, and even then may charge fees or take months to respond. If your local agency falls into the second category, file a records request early, ask other reporters in your area what they have managed to get and check whether a state agency aggregates the data your local department won’t release. See FOIA and requesting data for more information.
