Unfortunately, in this day and age, the source of the news is relevant. Different news outlets have different agendas, some more pronounced than others, and the way that the news is delivered is as important as the facts themselves. I have more trust in Newsweek as a non-biased source, whereas I know that the New York Times is less likely to write about a spike in violent crimes, and Fox News is going to trumpet that information as loudly as they can to distract from Covid and tell Americans that they are in danger from PoC and liberals so that they vote for the incumbent this fall.
The conversation here isn't so much the reality of the spike in crime as the perception of it. Crime and murder are up across the city. That's worrying. At the same time, New York City doesn't even rank in the top 100 most dangerous cities in America in 2019, and this rise in crime must be measured against the historically low crime rate. So is the story that New York is dangerous, or is the story that New York is still quite safe? Because the facts are only as important as the story that make from those facts.
I'm curious: do you think your friends would take a vacation to Florida right now? From where I'm sitting, that seems a much more dangerous place to be than New York City (though, to be clear, I won't even get on the subway right now). |
