Trinity College Dublin researcher Nicola Mastrorocco visited NCID to give a seminar entitled "Who Watches the Watchmen? Local News and Police Behavior in the United States". The speaker explained that the purchase of local television stations by a large national media company reduces coverage of crimes occurring in cities.

According to Mastrorocco, "these municipalities have a lower rate of violent crime resolution compared to cities that keep their local television stations." 

"We have seen in the case of Sinclair, which buys local television channels in different parts of the United States, how national news increases to the detriment of municipal news and how the content in general becomes more conservative from an ideological point of view," explained Professor Nicola Mastrorocco. 

The study concludes that the resolution of cases, especially the most violent ones, decreases for local police departments. Because crime news appears less in the news, "the public perceives this as less important and there is less pressure on the police to be effective with arrests," explains Mastrorocco.