I’ve decided to add a category to my Blog called “Fear vs. Truth”. In the era of 2017, our country seems enmeshed in a circus of “alternative facts” and “fake news”; when combined with rhetoric that incites fear and paranoia it becomes difficult to wade through the mud to find the statistics being manipulated to present a story versus statistics that are provided from primary sources.
Today I decided to go to the Facebook page of Fox News Politics. Yesterday, they added an article titled “Trump signs new immigration order, narrows scope of travel ban“. One of the reposes posted claimed that “trumps keeping america safe from problems like Europe! people are afraid to walk the streets in Sweden! serious but the media hides it! kinda like cnn…” Sometimes it can be difficult to tell whether or not the person posting is being sarcastic or not but I find that it is best to approach individuals as if they are serious; this makes for the most respectful interactions.
I began as I always do with, “Thank you for sharing your thoughts via Facebook. I do not know you and have no interest in shaming or insulting you for your opinions, perspectives, or beliefs. I found your comment interesting because…” I then began to research. It is absolutely amazing how easy researching has become with the invention of Google! I simply googled “Sweden crime rate” and looked for websites that ended in ‘.gov’. I ended up at the Overseas Security Advisory Council (OSAC) which is an inter-agency website that combines the U.S. Department of State and the Bureau of Diplomatic Security. This is a government website that works with America’s private sector to ensure that there is efficient and accurate communication between these two populations.
According to the OSAC’s reporting on Sweden’s Crime Statistics from 2015, there was a 4% increase in overall crime (with the highest increase in vandalism and computer-based fraud; and the percentage increase is “greatly attributed to computer-based fraud”). However, there was a slight decrease in theft, sex offenses, and traffic crimes. Additionally, there were approximately 90 homicides reported for the whole country. According to Worldometers.info (a very cool website that provides live calculations for human populations) states that Sweden has about 9.9 million people living in it.
Using information that I had collected earlier from the FBI’s website I offered a comparison to the homicide rate in the United States. which has approximately 325.7 million people living in it and reported 13,445 homicides in 2015. Using a graphic calculator online, I calculated the percentage of homicides per person in the United States (homicides/population) as .004% and juxtaposed this against the percentage of homicides per person in Sweden which was .0009%.
We can no longer rely on other corporations, businesses, and news outlets to provide us with information that is has not been tainted with opinions and a particular perspective. That means that it is up to each of us to go to the primary source and work to debunk false information without accusing or insulting the person who is merely repeating the erroneous information they have been told.
Creating A Nation United 