--:-- [Theme music fades out]
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--:-- Host Georgia Howe: Crime is spiking in neighborhoods across Manhattan. Murder, shootings, and robberies are all up. Meanwhile, residents and police are voicing concerns about weak penalties and immediate release of criminals. I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley. It's Saturday, August 27th, and this is Morning Wire.
--:-- Host Georgia Howe: The president of the American Historical Association issued an apology last week for an essay criticizing the 1619 Project. We discuss the high-profile academic controversy that caused the prestigious association to apologize and close down their Twitter account.
--:-- Host Georgia Howe: And for the first time ever, more people are streaming their entertainment than watching broadcast or cable TV. Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know.
--:-- Host Georgia Howe: you can. Newly released data reveal an alarming crime spike in New York City, with the most affected areas being previously safe downtown neighborhoods. Daily Wire investigative reporter Maraid Alordi is here with the details for us.
--:-- Maraid Alordi: Hi, Georgia. Well, the crime stats from July are pretty dismal. Across the city, robberies are up 37 percent from last July, and grand larceny is up 41 percent. That's according to the NYPD. The biggest hotspot for theft has been the West Village in Manhattan, which is known for its trendy nightlife and high end boutiques, restaurants and clubs, as well as being home to celebrities like Jennifer Lawrence and Sarah Jessica Parker.
--:-- Maraid Alordi: According to data through August 14th, grand larceny is up over 100% from last year in Greenwich Village, which includes the West Village. That's a jump from 394 to 802 grand larcenies. Meanwhile, burglaries are up 119% in the area, from 124 to 272 burglaries. In the past, the West Village was considered one of New York's safest neighborhoods, but now that perception may be changing as criminals target the area.
--:-- Maraid Alordi: So how are residents reacting to this? They're not happy. Some employees of shops in the West Village, where shoplifting is becoming rampant, say criminals are becoming fearless, and some blamed bail reform, which allows most larceny suspects to be released without posting bail. Some also said armed homeless people are also a problem and drive customers away.
--:-- Maraid Alordi: Now, aside from the West Village, are other parts of the city seeing the same trend? Yes, many of them are, including other upscale areas. For example, the financial district downtown has seen a 65% crime spike this year. The Wall Street area has seen almost 1 major crimes this year a big jump over the almost 700 the area saw by this time last year
--:-- Maraid Alordi: Murder is also up 34 across the city this July compared with last July Shootings are up 13 felony assault is up 18 and grand larceny of cards is up 26 Overall, crime is up 31% across the city. Now, Mayor Eric Adams ran on a platform of cracking down on crime. Has he commented on what he plans to do about this?
--:-- Maraid Alordi: Well, he hasn't made a formal statement about these latest numbers. Last month, he touted the fact that the June murder rate was lower than last June's, but he won't be able to do that with the murder rate spiking in July. The mayor appeared to sympathize at least somewhat last month when he complained about gun offenders returning to the streets and said the criminal justice system has, quote, turned away from the public and the rights of the public to live safe in their city.
--:-- Maraid Alordi: NYPD has repeatedly expressed frustration that the criminals they arrest are put back on the streets almost immediately, sometimes within days. Now, we just saw an example of this last week. What happened there?
--:-- Maraid Alordi: Yeah, so a 55-year-old male suspect put on gloves and then punched a 52-year-old victim in the head, fracturing his skull and breaking his cheekbone. This happened in the Bronx and was unprovoked. The victim has been put in a medically induced coma and suffered extensive injuries to his face and brain. The attacker was arrested but was out the very next day and his charge was reduced from attempted murder to misdemeanor assault.
--:-- Maraid Alordi: After intense backlash, the governor had him arrested again for violating his parole. It turns out the attacker is a registered sex offender who is on lifetime parole for a sexual assault case.
--:-- Host Georgia Howe: All right, well, a disturbing story. Maraid, thanks for reporting.
--:-- Host Georgia Howe: That's Daily Wire investigative reporter Maraid Elordi. Do you like to be the first to know about trendy news and current events? If so, you've got to get the Daily Wire Plus app. Not only will you receive mobile notifications whenever something's happening, but you'll also have access to the best commentary to break it all down. Download the Daily Wire Plus app and keep up with the facts no matter where your day takes you.
--:-- Host Georgia Howe: The president of the American Historical Association is facing backlash for an opinion column he wrote criticizing the New York Times 1619 project. The piece attracted a flurry of attention and controversy, causing the association to shut down its Twitter account. and for the president, James Sweet, to issue an apology.
--:-- Ash Short: So Ash, what exactly did James Sweet write? Sweet's criticism wasn't anything new, and it wasn't particularly harsh either. He suggested that too many modern historians are reading the past through the prism of current social justice themes, a perspective he calls presentism. As for the 1619 Project specifically, Sweet said he never thought of it primarily as a work of history, and he focused more on how different factions fought over the project once it was going to be taught in public schools.
--:-- Ash Short: Sweet expressed mild concern that the inclusion of the 1619 Project in school curriculum was another example of selectively edited history being used to further a political agenda. He also accused the right of attempting to remove the topic of slavery from school curriculum altogether for the same reasons.
--:-- Ash Short: So his essay was not really a historical critique of the piece, more just commentary on a trend he sees of people using history to service their present-day political agendas.
--:-- Host Georgia Howe: Correct. And it was actually one of the mildest criticisms of the 1619 Project I've seen. He basically expressed concern that the history field is becoming politicized and that present-day political lenses are coloring the way history is told in a variety of contexts.
--:-- Ash Short: He also said this is a decades-old issue that is prevalent across the political spectrum. At one point he accuses Americans in general of wielding history as a quote evidentiary grab bag to articulate their political positions He also accuses Justice Samuel Alito and Justice Clarence Thomas of doing the same thing in various rulings.
--:-- Ash Short: But this piece got a lot of backlash. What did the critics say?
--:-- Ash Short: The primary criticism was that Sweet is a privileged white man who is speaking from a position of power as a president of the American Historical Association. So his perception of objective history is unavoidably colored by his privileged identity.
--:-- Ash Short: For example, Kevin Gannon, director of the Center for the Advancement of Faculty Excellence at Queen's University of Charlotte, describes Sweet as a privileged white man condemning what he sees as everyone else's obsession with identity politics.
--:-- Ash Short: Other critics claim that Sweet's idea of objective history prevents historians from making the true moral judgments about the past. Within hours of posting the piece, the association's Twitter blew up with comments and it received praise from avowed white nationalist, Richard Spencer, who called Sweet's piece reasonable.
--:-- Ash Short: The association went on to restrict the Twitter account claiming in a post that the thread had been invaded by trolls. A couple days later, Sweet posted an apology.
--:-- Ash Short: And what did he say in that apology?
--:-- Ash Short: His apology, which now appears at the top of the original essay, says that he sincerely regrets alienating Black colleagues and friends. He also claimed his piece was clumsy and that he hopes to redeem himself in future conversations. He closes it by saying he is listening and learning.
--:-- Ash Short: Unfortunately for Sweet, the apology itself became fuel for controversy, with some people saying it didn't go far enough because it didn't adequately address the concerns that critics raised. Others, however, criticized Sweet for apologizing at all, saying that the AHA should allow members to express informed opinions without apology.
--:-- Host Georgia Howe: The AHA Twitter account remains closed, but Sweet remains the president of the association, at least for now. Well, he's certainly correct in saying that history has become extremely fraught.
--:-- Ash Short: Ash, thanks for reporting.
--:-- Host Georgia Howe: You're welcome. That's Daily Wire senior editor, Ash Short.
--:-- Host Georgia Howe: According to a report from Nielsen Data Tracking, Streaming services beat both broadcast and cable in television consumption for the first time in July. Here to tell us what factors may have gone into streaming taking the crown and whether the entertainment industry expects its reign to continue is Daily Wire culture reporter Megan Basham.
--:-- Megan Basham: So, Megan, streaming just surpassed cable for the first time, and I think for me the most surprising aspect is that it didn't happen sooner.
--:-- Megan Basham: Well, you know, surprisingly, it wasn't. streaming totals regularly beat TV, but July was the first time it bested cable. So streaming netted about 35% of viewing time compared with 34% for cable and 22% for the traditional big five broadcast networks.
--:-- Megan Basham: Time spent on the dominant streamers like Netflix and Disney Plus was up 23% over last year. By contrast, network TV was down about 10% and cable was down about nine points.
--:-- Megan Basham: Now, obviously, streaming being the newest option has more growth potential. But beyond that, do we know what's driving these numbers this year?
--:-- Megan Basham: You know, that's a good question. And one of the key things seems to be this flagging interest in pro sports. So broadcast sports is one of the categories that showed a major decline in viewership. It dropped to 43% year over year.
--:-- Megan Basham: Now, there are a lot of debates about why that is. A lot of analysts are pointing, for example, to the fact that sports have become more politicized. But whatever the reason, the fact is, they are an anchor for traditional TV they have been in the past and if viewers are tuning out of sports that naturally going to hit cable and broadcast much harder than streaming
--:-- Megan Basham: Then there also the fact that people see the golden age of the cable drama kind of coming to an end. I know, for example, Georgia, that you are a big fan of Better Call Saul. Right. And a lot of people feel that the end of that series kind of represents the last gasp of prestige cable viewing that really began way back with The Sopranos in 1999.
--:-- Megan Basham: Then there's also the fact that it's much harder to get a clear sense of which shows truly have that same drawing power on streaming because viewership data is controversial and notoriously private there. So sometimes it feels like streamers are able to manipulate the perception of a show's popularity.
--:-- Megan Basham: This was Netflix CEO Reed Hastings talking about that. In terms of time, that's the real competition. The tricky thing in this streaming war is, you know, Apple and Disney is not going to break out revenue for the service. And you'll hear some subscriber numbers, but you can just bundle things in. So that's not going to be that relevant.
--:-- Megan Basham: So the real measurement will be time. How do consumers vote with their evenings? And do they end up watching what mix of all the services? So in a way, streamers may be able to create some self-fulfilling prophecies in a way that much more heavily tracked TV can't.
--:-- Megan Basham: Now, is it all bad news for traditional TV or are there any advantages still?
--:-- Megan Basham: Well, you know, I mean, as you and I have explored before, Georgia, streaming does have some of its own woes right now. And one of the big ones is something called churn. And what that means is subscribers drop the service once they've watched those one or two big buzzy series.
--:-- Megan Basham: And then there's also something the industry calls subscription fatigue. And what that is, is consumers are overwhelmed with the number of platforms. they have to individually subscribe to when they only want to watch a couple of shows on the service.
--:-- Megan Basham: So there's been some record of people dropping more services because of that. So the big streamers like Netflix and Disney have started to have some major stock problems. Now they're streamlining how they spend money on content to focus on fewer projects but more major productions.
--:-- Megan Basham: The big buying boom is probably over for now. But they're always looking for ways to boost revenue, and one way they're doing it is, wait for it, old-fashioned TV-style advertising.
--:-- Megan Basham: And then finally, I think, you know, the premiere of House of the Dragon, the Game of Thrones spinoff, demonstrated that while streamers are seen as the new wave of entertainment technology, it can still run into bugs that cable and traditional TV don't.
--:-- Megan Basham: For example, the show premiered both on the standard HBO cable channel and its streaming service, HBO Max, on Sunday night. Apparently, so many viewers were trying to stream the show at the same time, it caused the app to crash for thousands. People who watched on cable didn't have any of those problems.
--:-- Host Georgia Howe: Right, well, that makes me feel very strategic that I waited to watch until Monday night.
--:-- Megan Basham: Megan, thanks for reporting.
--:-- Host Georgia Howe: My pleasure. That's Daily Wire Culture reporter, Megan Basham.
--:-- Host Georgia Howe: Other stories we're tracking this week. A federal judge unsealed a redacted version of the affidavit used to justify the raid on former President Trump's home on Friday. Of the 32-page document, 11 pages were almost completely redacted and others were partially or heavily redacted. The viewable portion of the document cited Trump's months-long refusal to return documents.
--:-- Host Georgia Howe: Tennis champion Novak Djokovic will not play in the U.S. Open because he's still unable to enter the country due to his vaccination status.
--:-- Host Georgia Howe: That's all the time we've got this morning. Thanks for waking up with us. We'll be back tomorrow with the news you need to know.
