Are we being manipulated by trending stories on social media?

I think it was either Wall Street Journal or Washington Post that posted a side by side view of what trends on Facebook on various issues. I suppose they calculate from hashtags, which I rarely use. You can check any of about 10 issues and see how we are being told completely different versions by the (mostly) on-line media which are often connected to mainstream TV and print. For instance, much on the left about bathrooms is posted by an LGBQT rights organization that probably few on the right have ever heard of.  I see I'm not the only one posting statistics about percent of white offenders shot by police exceeding black, but that news isn't crossing over. Some reporters definitely don't know the difference between percentage and rate, and believe crime should reflect percentage of population. If that were so, 50% of homicides would be by females. Although both left and right could read Department of Justice reports that homicide rate declined from 9.3 homicides per 100,000 in 1992 to 4.8 homicides per 100,000 in 2010, they disagree on why, and rarely cite it in #blacklivesmatter stories, even though blacks have benefitted the most. Unfortunately, there is something called the Ferguson affect and crime is on the uptick--again, disagreement on why.

November 2011, NCJ 236018

What if you read a story about Chicago murders and that most occur on street and alleys and parking lots, in fact that the outdoor rate of murders had gone from 61.3% in 1991 to 82.4% in 2011.  Scary, right?  But what if you read that in 1991 the outdoor murder number in Chicago was 928, and by 2011 had dropped to 435, and the streets of Chicago are safer than 20 years ago?  Both figures are true, but it depends on the slant the reporter chooses to use to manipulate the reader. Black Lives Matter will probably not tell you that most of the falling crime rate in the last two decades has been for blacks, because the white rate was low 20 years ago, and is still low.  It is the black community, the one complaining about increased police presence in the neighborhood and more black criminals in prison that has benefitted the most from the Clinton era omnibus crime bill.

Chicago murder analysis, 2011

Cleveland Browns running back Isaiah Crowell posted a drawing/cartoon of someone dressed all in black (a message?) slitting the throat of a policeman. He's since apologized for his poor decision. Sorry. That's not good enough for me. He needs to hear from President Obama and AG Lynch and lose his flying privileges and the Browns should fire him. Where was his outrage at black men being killed by black men, which is about 4,500 a year or 40— criminal or innocent — for every one killed by a cop, and where was his rage when whites, mostly committing crimes, were killed by police to protect him, his family, and job--that number is higher than blacks. He's disgusting. And the media can step up and take the blame for race pimping and never telling the truth, only reporting about blacks, and often erroneously.