Eight ways the media will mess up reporting on 2021 crime data
crimethoughts.substack.com
Last year the FBI reported that its estimated national murder rate increased from about 0.0051% of the population being murdered in 2019 to about 0.0065 in 2020. This was front-page news from nearly every major news organization, with almost all having the banner headline of murder increasing by around 30%, or how this was the single largest year-to-year increase on record. Often they’d talk about rates per 100,000 rather than percent of the population number I’m using, though these are identical except for multiplying by a constant. Using my numbers, homicides barely budged from basically 0% of the population to also basically 0% of the population. Using what nearly everyone else uses - the 30% number and the rate per 100,000 - makes the change seem far more dramatic. So who’s right? We both are. And we’re both wrong.
Eight ways the media will mess up reporting on 2021 crime data
Eight ways the media will mess up reporting…
Eight ways the media will mess up reporting on 2021 crime data
Last year the FBI reported that its estimated national murder rate increased from about 0.0051% of the population being murdered in 2019 to about 0.0065 in 2020. This was front-page news from nearly every major news organization, with almost all having the banner headline of murder increasing by around 30%, or how this was the single largest year-to-year increase on record. Often they’d talk about rates per 100,000 rather than percent of the population number I’m using, though these are identical except for multiplying by a constant. Using my numbers, homicides barely budged from basically 0% of the population to also basically 0% of the population. Using what nearly everyone else uses - the 30% number and the rate per 100,000 - makes the change seem far more dramatic. So who’s right? We both are. And we’re both wrong.