Selective Victim Visibility

Media outlets routinely choose which victims to foreground and which to ignore, and those editorial choices systematically influence political legitimacy for security measures (e.g., Guard deployments), public outrage, and the allocation of enforcement resources. The resulting visibility gap creates uneven pressure on officials and can be used strategically by both politicians and news organizations to shape policy debates. — If normalized, selective visibility becomes a primary mechanism by which media shape crime policy and democratic accountability, demanding transparency about editorial selection and routine audits of who gets covered.