Austin American Statesman Hires Anti-Police Reporter to Report on Police

Citizens should expect more biased reporting from The Statesman.

The Austin American-Statesman has hired a journalist, whom many are calling anti-police, as their new “public safety” reporter.

Austin Sanders, a journalist with approximately seven years of tenure at the Austin Chronicle, recently announced on X that he would be leaving the Austin Chronicle to write for the Austin American-Statesman. Many on X had a visceral response to the announcement.

Sanders, a native of the city of Austin, has often written articles highly critical of police.

Current Revolt searched through articles and X posts by Sanders for content that was complimentary or positive regarding police but was unable to locate anything positive.

Sanders’ X posts have a negative view of police, and many contained strong leftist spin/ideology.

Sanders has a very obvious bias to his reporting and work that he isn’t afraid to publish:

Austin citizens reacted negatively to the announcement of Sanders moving to the Statesman.

We spoke with Dennis Farris, President of the Austin Retired Officers Association who wrote the above post on X and he gave us the following statement:

It is outrageous that The Statesman would hire a blatantly biased reported to report on the public safety beat. I have emailed the editor-in-chief of The Statesman to rethink this hire or assign Sanders to a different beat or I would be emailing everyone in my database, which is well over three thousand people, and direct them to cancel their subscription to The Statesman. The first one that would be cancelled would be mine.
- Dennis Farris
President of the Austin Retired Officers Association

Biased journalism is nothing new in Texas. Many outlets, including Current Revolt, take a political position or lean in their reporting. However, many media outlets, unlike Current Revolt, often refuse to admit this bias.