5 ms·

This is because of cable news reporting on several high profile young-girl abductions over the last 20 years. Statistically the chance is very small, but these

by oli5679 10y ago

This is because of cable news reporting on several high profile young-girl abductions over the last 20 years. Statistically the chance is very small, but these horrible stories have been burned into the consciousness of a generation of mothers.

grecy 10y ago
Cable news has severely distorted Americans view of what's dangerous and what's not, in the interest of getting more people hooked on TV. Even very minor shark attack in Australia is blown out of all proportion until everyone thinks the wildlife in Australia is going to kill you. It's the same reason everyone thinks Colombia, Mexico and Africa are insanely dangerous. The media/Hollywood told them so, and they believe it. Never mind the more than 500 people a year that are murdered in NYC and another 500 in Chicago every single year. Nobody would tell a person not to go on vacation to NYC because it's too dangerous, but they'll talk until they're blue in the face about how you're going to be murdered in Senegal, Mauritania or Colombia.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- semi-extrinsic 10y ago
  > Never mind the more than 500 people a year that are murdered in NYC and another 500 in Chicago every single year. It's a war going on outside we ain't safe from I feel the pain in my city wherever I go 314 soldiers died in Iraq, 509 died in Chicago - K. West
  - icebraining 10y ago
    By that logic, Germany in the same year was a more dangerous place than either, at 700+ murders. Lies, damned lies and Kanye West statistics?
    - grecy 10y ago
      > By that logic, Germany in the same year was a more dangerous place than either, at 700+ murders. And Germany has a population of 80 million people. More than 10x the population of either NYC or Chicago, so it's actually over 10x safer
      - icebraining 10y ago
        Exactly. And similarly, Iraq only had 150k US soldiers, so it was actually much more dangerous than Chicago. Which is why Kanye West's comparison is nonsensical.
        grecy 10y ago
        > Which is why Kanye West's comparison is nonsensical. When you think about it from a media perspective, I think it's actually very insightful. The American public was up in arms about the death of 314 soldiers on foreign soil, but seemingly oblivious to the >500 killed right at home in just one city in the good 'ol USA. Surely all lives are equal, and it doesn't matter where a person is killed, but only that they are killed. For every minute of airtime given to the deaths Overseas, more than that should have been given to the deaths in Chicago alone. And NYC, and Baltimore, etc. etc. It wasn't. The media is not giving an accurate representation of real life, and now people are making life decisions based on that false picture.
        deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
        leereeves 10y ago
        A lot of that airtime (discussing US soldiers killed in Iraq) should be charged to politics. Liberal media and entertainers heavily criticized the war in Iraq, but said much less about the 1600 US soldiers killed in Afghanistan during Obama's term (496 in 2010). If they could find a way to blame murders in Chicago or Detroit on Republicans, they'd spent a lot of airtime on that too.
        10y ago
- bcgraham 10y ago
  More than 500 murders a year in NYC is untrue.
  - nommm-nommm 10y ago
    A quick Wikipedia says 352 murders in 2015. So waaayyy less than 500.
- nommm-nommm 10y ago
  A whole lot of people tell you to avoid NYC because it's "dangerous."
gerbilly 10y ago
>because of [...] high profile young-girl abductions over the last 20 years. Statistically the chance is very small... In fact the probability of stranger child abduction is at its lowest point in 50 years.
- 4ad 10y ago
  Exactly, but most people don't know it, and even if some know it on an intellectual level, they don't really internalize it on a practical level. See also TSA and terrorism, etc.
  - grkvlt 10y ago
    It turns out that AMBER alerts have actually been described in the same way as TSA procedures ("security theater") - they are "crime control theater" [1] because if a child is going to be killed by an abductor, generally it happens within three hours of the abduction, and there is nothing law enforcement can really do to prevent that, they just cannot move quickly enough. > In fact, AMBER Alert is arguably an example of what could be called crime control theater. It is a socially constructed “solution” to a socially constructed problem, enabling public officials to symbolically address an essentially intractable threat. [1] http://cjr.sagepub.com/content/33/2/159.abstract http://cjr.sagepub.com/content/33/2/159.abstract "Child Abduction, AMBER Alert, and Crime Control Theater"

by oli5679 10y ago

grecy 10y ago

Cable news has severely distorted Americans view of what's dangerous and what's not, in the interest of getting more people hooked on TV. Even very minor shark attack in Australia is blown out of all proportion until everyone thinks the wildlife in Australia is going to kill you. It's the same reason everyone thinks Colombia, Mexico and Africa are insanely dangerous. The media/Hollywood told them so, and they believe it. Never mind the more than 500 people a year that are murdered in NYC and another 500 in Chicago every single year. Nobody would tell a person not to go on vacation to NYC because it's too dangerous, but they'll talk until they're blue in the face about how you're going to be murdered in Senegal, Mauritania or Colombia.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
semi-extrinsic 10y ago
> Never mind the more than 500 people a year that are murdered in NYC and another 500 in Chicago every single year. It's a war going on outside we ain't safe from I feel the pain in my city wherever I go 314 soldiers died in Iraq, 509 died in Chicago - K. West
- icebraining 10y ago
  By that logic, Germany in the same year was a more dangerous place than either, at 700+ murders. Lies, damned lies and Kanye West statistics?
  - grecy 10y ago
    > By that logic, Germany in the same year was a more dangerous place than either, at 700+ murders. And Germany has a population of 80 million people. More than 10x the population of either NYC or Chicago, so it's actually over 10x safer
    - icebraining 10y ago
      Exactly. And similarly, Iraq only had 150k US soldiers, so it was actually much more dangerous than Chicago. Which is why Kanye West's comparison is nonsensical.
      - grecy 10y ago
        > Which is why Kanye West's comparison is nonsensical. When you think about it from a media perspective, I think it's actually very insightful. The American public was up in arms about the death of 314 soldiers on foreign soil, but seemingly oblivious to the >500 killed right at home in just one city in the good 'ol USA. Surely all lives are equal, and it doesn't matter where a person is killed, but only that they are killed. For every minute of airtime given to the deaths Overseas, more than that should have been given to the deaths in Chicago alone. And NYC, and Baltimore, etc. etc. It wasn't. The media is not giving an accurate representation of real life, and now people are making life decisions based on that false picture.
        deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
        leereeves 10y ago
        A lot of that airtime (discussing US soldiers killed in Iraq) should be charged to politics. Liberal media and entertainers heavily criticized the war in Iraq, but said much less about the 1600 US soldiers killed in Afghanistan during Obama's term (496 in 2010). If they could find a way to blame murders in Chicago or Detroit on Republicans, they'd spent a lot of airtime on that too.
        10y ago
bcgraham 10y ago
More than 500 murders a year in NYC is untrue.
- nommm-nommm 10y ago
  A quick Wikipedia says 352 murders in 2015. So waaayyy less than 500.
nommm-nommm 10y ago
A whole lot of people tell you to avoid NYC because it's "dangerous."

gerbilly 10y ago

>because of [...] high profile young-girl abductions over the last 20 years. Statistically the chance is very small... In fact the probability of stranger child abduction is at its lowest point in 50 years.

4ad 10y ago
Exactly, but most people don't know it, and even if some know it on an intellectual level, they don't really internalize it on a practical level. See also TSA and terrorism, etc.
- grkvlt 10y ago
  It turns out that AMBER alerts have actually been described in the same way as TSA procedures ("security theater") - they are "crime control theater" [1] because if a child is going to be killed by an abductor, generally it happens within three hours of the abduction, and there is nothing law enforcement can really do to prevent that, they just cannot move quickly enough. > In fact, AMBER Alert is arguably an example of what could be called crime control theater. It is a socially constructed “solution” to a socially constructed problem, enabling public officials to symbolically address an essentially intractable threat. [1] http://cjr.sagepub.com/content/33/2/159.abstract http://cjr.sagepub.com/content/33/2/159.abstract "Child Abduction, AMBER Alert, and Crime Control Theater"