Very often, conservatives and complicit (negligent) mainstream media want to frighten us about something. Very often, the fears they are promoting are based on propaganda and lies. They want to frighten us and stampede us into bad “solutions” (more nuclear weapons, “tough-on-crime” laws, oppression of LGBTQ+ people, etc.
Now the big new scary thing is a “crime wave.” Actually, this is bogus. See these sources of information:
This was posted on October 17, 2023: https://popular.info/p/americas-zombie-crime-wave?publication_id=1664&post_id=138025852&isFreemail=true&r=2gj9g5
We need to reform and humanize our criminal justice system, but this was reported on May3, 2023: “Media Crime Hype Helps Roll Back Reforms” — https://fair.org/home/media-crime-hype-helps-roll-back-reforms/
The Young Turks (www.tytnetwork.com) posted this on October 17, 2023:
| Tuesday, Oct. 17 Crime Fell in 2022And we have new information about Fox fear-mongering.A year ago, in the runup to the 2022 mid-term elections, Washington Post columnist Philip Bump noticed Fox paying increased attention to sensationalistic crime stories. Like, even more than usual. The national data weren’t out yet, so Fox’s coverage of blood-soaked Democratic cities wasn’t based on empiricism, it was anecdotal. Well, now Bump’s got the empirical data. So hold onto your hats like you would in downtown Portland because guess what? Fox was full of shit. And even more guess what, they stopped covering the massacring of America right after the elections. Well, not totally stopped, but this-much stopped: Now, there is a (weak) defense of Fox to be made here. I’m not exonerating them, mind you, I just think it’s important to understand the dynamics, because they’re not unique to Fox. In a runup to an election, you tend to focus on issues and stories relevant to who’s in charge. The problem is that much of TV “news” – not just Fox – is curated based on … nothing. Some producer’s unexamined “sense” of what’s “interesting.” To them. At the moment. And here’s how full of shit anyone was warning about crime: Yes, property crimes were up last year. Slightly, But not to Trump-level highs. But homicides and other violent crime? Down from 2021: In fact, as you can see, both violent crimes overall and homicides specifically were at higher rates when Trump left office than when he took office. And if anyone on the left or the right was inclined to blame Democrats for the rise in crime before we knew whether it was real, I can’t wait to hear them credit Democrats for the drop in crime now that we know it was real. And if you’re enjoying these Washington Post charts, I’m gonna give you one more so you can rest assured that everyone older than 30 has known a considerably more dangerous nation than the one we live in today.
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