In 2020, the United States experienced one of its most dangerous years in decades.
The number of murders across the country surged by nearly 30 percent between 2019 and 2020, according to FBI statistics. The overall violent crime rate, which includes murder, assault, robbery and rape, inched up around 5 percent in the same period.
But in 2023, crime in America looked very different.
“At some point in 2022 — at the end of 2022 or through 2023 — there was just a tipping point where violence started to fall and it just continued to fall,” said Jeff Asher, a crime analyst and co-founder of AH Datalytics.
…
There are some outliers to this trend — murder rates are up in Washington, D.C., Memphis and Seattle, for example — and some nonviolent crimes like car theft are up in certain cities. But the national trend on violence is clear.
You’re right, but that’s not why people think violent crime is high. They think that because the media knows that when they report on crime, they get eyes on them and eyes on them mean they can sell more advertising. So every violent crime they can report on gets reported on and in ever-increasing numbers to make it look like the amount of violent crime is at least steady, if not rising.
And, of course, that helps “tough on crime” politicians (mostly Republicans) as well.
I wonder how tough it would be to set up an “open source” style news media / investigative journal. Ideally using crowdfunding
Something without an incentive for metrics chasing
The problem in a nutshell is us. They wouldn’t chase crime if it didn’t get more people tuning in.
ETA - there’s no reason you couldn’t, just like there’s 2 or 3 projects trying to debias news.
Besides public radio, Wikinews is established (albeit quite dead)! No funding for contributors to the latter, so you might be left trying BuyMeACoffee/Patreon (or a grant?).
I think you can go to NPR, or blog solo with a Patreon, or get with a few other journalists like 404 Media did - founded 5 months ago, already breaking some stories, sometimes collabing with other journalists. Wikinews is better for casual internet-journalists but it’s hard even just reading a bunch of sources and compiling a story effectively. It’s rarely updated; very few want to/can do that work for free.
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Interesting observation:
Rachel Swan, a breaking news and enterprise reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle, says there are “two really visible crises” in the downtown area: homelessness and open-air drug use.
“And honestly, people conflate that with crime, with street safety,” she said. “One thing I’m starting to learn in reporting on public safety is that you can put numbers in front of people all day, and numbers just don’t speak to people the way narrative does.”
I’ve seen lots of attack ads that seek to protray homelessness as a crime issue, and not a poverty issue
Poverty and health. Health linked to poverty. Sometimes the other way around. We’re in a health and housing and affordability crisis.
I’d be curious as to know which segment of Americans are least likely to believe it - or actively professing the opposite.
It starts with a C
Chimichangas
Pat, I’d like to solve the puzzle.
Cups!
Cunts!
Cocks!
People around here and Reddit get really angry when you point this out. It’s weird, it’s like people want things to suck.
its cause all they hear in their news bubbles is doom and gloom and constant violence and shooting.
and cant take a second to think about the fact that these reports are from across the entire fucking country, or even beyond its borders, They just focus on “news says things bad brrrrr”
This is a constant argument in my family, and for this exact reason. No amount of statistical or empirical evidence convinces them, and the response is “If thats true was is the news always reporting violence?!”
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Well I think part of it is WHO is being killed when there are crimes. And that is children. No one can get behind that.
How about white collar crime? Seems like a lot of people made out pretty well with Covid relief funds.
i was looking for numbers though. specifically how crime in 2022 and 2023 compare to BEFORE the big spike that happened in 2019 and 2020. If crime is still higher than it was in 2018, then this local minimum isn’t going to matter as much.
It’s lower than 2018. Lower than 2010. Lower than 2000. Lower than 1990.
The only year it’s not lower than is 2019. And it’s just barely higher.
Americans don’t believe it because the media wants us scared.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/191219/reported-violent-crime-rate-in-the-usa-since-1990/
I still don’t believe it, at least not where I live. Once you have someone in your friend group get murdered, for no good fucking reason, it becomes harder to pretend everything is ok. It doesn’t help that the local news reports another stabbing or shooting most days of the week.
Sounds like where you live sucks. But it’s always possible to have something random and unlikely happen even in the safest of places. Getting bitten by a shark doesn’t mean sharks all need to die. You’re just exceptionally unlucky.
You probably just notice it more since it has actually affected you.
but you’re wrong, or you live in an outlier place that’s still bad, likely in economic decline
You should probably ask why the news makes it seem so violent when statistics tell us it’s not.
As police shooting are through the roof. Media is strangely quiet on those stats.
It’s actually really hard to get those stats. Most police departments do not publicly report the numbers.
The ones that are verifiable are through the roof
Three people were killed at my trade school today.
They almost never do. There was a brief spike there a few years ago, but overall, violent crime has been going down for decades.
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If you want to challenge actual data and claim it’s not correct, you need data to show that. If you don’t have data to challenge that claim but you’re still suspicious, you can say we need more, better data and we should make efforts to gather it.
But simply asserting that the data is wrong with nothing to back you up but the hot air coming out of your mouth is crap and anyone with two brain cells to rub together can see that.
