The Price Of Fake News

Last summer we saw riots in looting in some American cities. Some of these riots were in response to ‘police brutality’ in America. The mainstream media has been working the ‘police brutality’ angle since the Obama administration (remember the ‘beer summit’?). But what do the actual numbers show?

On February 23rd, The Western Journal posted an article contrasting what liberals believe about police brutality with the truth.

The article reports:

Misinformation is an epidemic, and the liberal media is spreading it.

Forty-four percent of liberals believe 1,000 or more unarmed black men were murdered by police in 2019, according to a study released Saturday.

…The study, published by Skeptic Research Center, specifically details that about 27 percent of those who reported being “liberal” estimated about 1,000 unarmed black men were killed by police in 2019, while about 31 percent of those who reported being “very liberal” estimated the same.

In contrast, about half of those who reported being “conservative” or “very conservative” estimated about 10 unarmed black men were killed in 2019.

The actual numbers are staggering; according to a Mapping Police Violence, a crowdsourced database cited in a USA Today fact-check, just 25 unarmed black men were killed.

The article concludes:

Balko (Radley Balko for the Washington Post) also writes that, according to a 2020 Austin Office of Police Oversight, Office of Innovation and Equity Office report, African-Americans and Latinos were “more likely than Whites to be stopped, searched and arrested,” even though there were reportedly similar “hit rates” for narcotics among those groups.

However, this paragraph doesn’t mention specific numbers or figures at all, only increasing the misleading nature of the article.

Of course, the obvious question always looms; which group of people commits more crime? Wouldn’t that solve the issue?

Yes, actually. According to Federal Bureau of Information statistics, more than half of homicide offenders are African-American.

When bringing up statistics like this one, unfortunately, those who use it are accused of racism. However, the math works out; if more African-Americans are committing violent crimes, it simply makes sense that police officers would use force against more African-Americans.

It’s about time conservatives stop accepting the liberal media agenda and start reporting the facts. Overexaggerations like the ones SRC’s study found are unacceptable and frankly dangerous to American politics. Rather than let these wade around and die down on their own, we ought to stomp the lies out now.

So why do have this major split in what Americans believe? Part of it is due to the mainstream media, but a lot of the responsibility falls on Americans themselves. All of us need to develop critical thinking skills that question everything the media is telling us. When people begin to tune out the mainstream media and stop believing their lies, it is possible that they might start telling the truth.