In 1974, a band named Paper Lace reached the number one slot on the Billboard Hot 100 with a song called “The Night Chicago Died”. It was a song about a street fight between the Chicago Police and Al Capone’s mob which left 100 policemen dead on the East Side of Chicago. Hmmmm, several problems with this tune:
- There is no East side of Chicago, in fact Lake Michigan is directly east of Chicago,
- There is no record, I could find, of Al Capone’s men having a large shoot out with Chicago Police. Especially not one which would have left 100 officers dead.
- The most notable clash of Capone’s cohorts took place in “A commercial garage on the north side of Chicago was the setting for the most horrific shooting in Mob history, the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. On February 14, 1929, seven members and associates of George “Bugs” Moran’s bootlegging gang were lined up against a wall and shot dead inside the garage at 2122 North Clark Street. Al Capone’s Chicago Outfit was widely suspected of ordering the hit, but no one was ever prosecuted.”1 So, were Capone’s people really involved?
Suppose you heard the song and took it to heart as fact? You might even think it was based on a real life event. A band member wrote about it, perhaps lived through the event, it had some meaning to them, and they had to write about it in song to immortalize the meaning for them. Actually, the band members who collaborated on the song were British and had never been to Chicago. 2
Crime in my city is out of control. The news reports this every evening. Is crime really rising in my neighborhood? In my city? Shootings, robberies, burglaries…”carjackings have risen by 118% according to ‘city-data’ ”. 3 Wait, “Carjackings up 90% from last 4 years”4 There seems to be a discrepancy even between news outlets on statistics. In this case do the statistics matter? Or are the statistics just a way of bringing the increased number of carjackings in the city to a shocking “in your face” depiction?
When I took the time to look up the most dangerous cities in America for 2020, I was surprised not to find my city listed and was shocked to see the ones that are. I used the Google search engine and typed “top 10 most dangerous cities in the USA 2020”. The search brought me right to the following list of the 10 most dangerous metro areas in America for 2020:
- Anchorage, Alaska
- Albuquerque, New Mexico
- Memphis, Tennessee
- Wichita, Kansas
- Lubbock, Texas
- Detroit-Dearborn-Livonia, Michigan
- Spokane-Spokane Valley, Washington
- Shreveport-Bossier City, Louisiana
- Corpus Christi, Texas
- Mobile, Alabama
Where was New Orleans? New York? Dallas? Seattle? Chicago? Any Florida city? The list did not match what I anticipated based on what I hear in the local/national news every evening. How is this?
The list was not listed as “sponsored”, but with the notation of “About featured snippets”
“How featured snippets are chosen:
Featured snippets come from web search listings. Google’s automated systems determine whether a page would make a good featured snippet to highlight for a specific search request. Your feedback helps us improve our search algorithms and the quality of your search results.
Tip: If you’re a webmaster, learn how to manage featured snippets in Google Search.”5
I thought that was odd, so thinking “wait…let’s use the Bing search engine; same search”, the search brought me right to the following list:
Top 10 Most Dangerous Cities In America 2020
Contents
10. Richmond, California
9. Kansas City, Missouri
8. Newark, New Jersey
7. Milwaukee, Wisconsin
6. Springfield, Massachusetts
5. Baltimore, Maryland
4. Cleveland, Ohio
3. New Haven, Connecticut
2. Oakland, California
1. Little Rock, Arkansas6
This caused me to think to myself, “wait just a second, this is a completely different listing coming up under the same search on a different search engine.” So if I flip the news channel, I could get a very different story from the same question?
Now intrigued, I visited one last site, https://duckduckgo.com with the same search. The first result was the 25 Most Dangerous Cities In The US In 2020. The second result was Top 10 Deadliest Cities In The USA. The third result was closest to what I asked for, however the presentation was a slide show.7
10. Camden, N.J.
9. Wilmington, Del.
8. Saginaw, Mich.
7. Danville, Ill.
6. St. Louis
5. Flint, Mich.
4. Baltimore
3. Birmingham, Ala.
2. Memphis, Tenn.
1. Detroit
Hmmmm, I visited three different search engines, used the same search, and was sent in three different directions.
Media, any media, can present a picture of a story and take poetic license either by error of omission or by using data to show their take on an issue and it is up to you, the receiver of the information, to decide whether what you see and/or hear is true. Educate yourselves! Find a news source, a website, a reporter, a statistical site, or several, that give you the whole picture of the happenings around you. Choose these carefully. Listen to many stories and points of view before making up your mind on issues important to you. The days of Walter Cronkite, Edward R. Murrow, and the like are gone. Have you ever heard the saying there are three sides to every story: your side, my side, and the truth? Today more than ever if you are getting your news and updates from only one point of view how can YOU judge what YOU believe about an event taking place today?
As a side note, no shootout, robbery, or murder conviction would get Capone in the end. Instead, he “would be brought to justice…for failing to pay his income tax.”8 Who knew?
Have a great evening and I invite your reply and your experiences in dealing with finding Your Truth.
1 https://themobmuseum.org/exhibits/massacre-wall/ accessed February 28, 2021
2 https://www.songfacts.com/facts/paper-lace/the-night-chicago-died, accessed February 28, 2021
3 https://www.fox8live.com/news/investigate/crimetracker/, accessed February 28, 2021
4 https://www.wwltv.com/article/news/local/orleans/new-report-5-year-uptick-in-car-burglaries/289-50d15743-7f38-4d2e-8d41-f2d505dd8e90, accessed February 28, 2021
5 https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/9351707?p=featured_snippets&hl=en&visit_id=637501387315528762-3246124385&rd=1#zippy=%2Cwhy-featured-snippets-may-be-removed
6 https://listtop10s.com/top-10-most-dangerous-cities-in-america-2015/#:~:text=Here%20are%20the%20top%2010%20most%20dangerous%20cities,Maryland%204.%20Cleveland,%20Ohio%203.%20New%20Haven,%20Connecticut
7 https://www.americancityandcounty.com/2020/02/03/2020s-10-most-dangerous-u-s-cities/
America Unspun 
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