>Who (other than the police) actually thinks such reporting is bad?

there is a growing number of people who espouse the belief that grievances towards the police/government/military are by their very nature anti-patriotic, and there is a pretty real history of coercion towards 'under-reporting' on certain stories in the media; it's not real surprise to me that this exists on the lower scales of local municipality/etc, as well.

'chilling' is a very real concept, and it seems to snowball.