Reading the news and social media these days,
it can feel like the world is crumbling around
us. Let’s talk about why.
Racially motivated local and national violence
have been all over our newsfeeds lately. There
are three major factors at work here: The
actual incidence of violence (and particularly
gun violence), the reporting of that violence
(to authorities, by authorities, and in the
media), and the perception of that violence
by everyone involved. First, let’s look
at the actual violence. In 2015, the Pew Research
Center published an analysis of the data collected
by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
through death certificates over the past few
decades. This data indicates that, per capita,
America’s gun homicide rate has remained
more or less flat between the years 2000 and
2014. Further, that rate has decreased by
over 50 percent since its peak in 1993. However,
Gallup polls consistently indicate that Americans
believe violent crime is on the rise. Psychologists
have drawn correlations between homicide reportage
and fear levels among populations, and a trend
analysis out of the Columbia Journalism School
found that since the 1950s, news media have
been sweepingly misrepresenting violent crime
incidence in their coverage. Just one example:
In 1981, 0.4 percent of the crimes committed
in New Orleans were homicides, but about half
of crime news focused on the subject. And
that was in 1981. The news media has changed
a bit since then. Newsroom employment is down
over 42 percent from its all-time high in
1990, due to changes in the economy and the
funding upset created by the rise of digital
media. That means we have about 33 thousand
news journalists in the United States. Compare
that to the fact that by the most recent numbers,
we have about 158 million smartphone users,
all of whom have instant access to publishing
tools via social media. And some of whom are
using that access to share stories that may
have not been reported in the past. The decreasing
gun homicide rate that I mentioned earlier
does include fatal police shootings. However,
when you break this statistic out on its own,
the story is different. According to Pew,
fatal police shootings rose from 333 incidents
in 2009 to 464 in 2014. And according to the
Washington Post, that number was up to 990
in 2015. Black people, and black men ages
15-34 in particular, are disproportionately
the victims of this deadly force: Young black
men make up 2 percent of the population but
account for 15% of the deaths, and are 9 times
more likely to die in police incidents than
any other demographic, according to the Guardian.
It’s unclear whether these dramatic increases
indicate actual increases in incidence, or
whether they’re artifacts of how the data
was gathered and whether these incidents have
been underreported by law enforcement agencies.
An analysis by the Wall Street Journal in
2014 found hundreds of police killings missing
from the FBI’s official files over the past
several years. So are gun violence and police
violence on the rise in America? We don’t
have the answer, because no one does. But
we’re certainly more aware of it. Hopefully,
that awareness will help drive changes to
make our most vulnerable populations safer.
What do you think? This is obviously an extremely
heated topic. For more on this and lots more
going on in the world right now, head to now.howstuffworks.com.
