Just a few weeks ago, the Daily Mail UK published 2 lists of Dangerous Cities. One List was the 10 Most Dangerous Cities in America, the other was the 40 Most Dangerous Cities in the World. Somewhat surprisingly, at least to me, Cleveland, Ohio was on both lists. Now I know Cleveland is perennially on the Top 10 Most Dangerous Cities in America list, but, I mean, is Cleveland really more dangerous than Aden, Yemen or Kherson, Ukraine?
I went over to cleveland.com to see their angle on the stories and they had nothing. So I wrote Cleveland is NOT Dangerous...According to Cleveland.com.
Then, this morning, this was the headline at the Daily Mail:
Missing kids? I mean that seems like a big story? Went back to cleveland.com to see their lead story:
Within 4 hours, the original story was picked up by the Drudge Report, but not at cleveland.com? :
Now that brings up a lot of questions.
You would think that 50 missing school children would be a lot. If you read the article in the Daily Mail, they say that some of that number are runaways and some kids might just be unaccounted for. Okay, using simple math, that's about a kid and a half a day. You would think a missing kid a day would wind up on the local news?
Now if your town was losing a kid a day, don't you think there'd be a drumbeat for a greater police presence?
I am really struggling with this. I had a vague knowledge that kids in the city went missing more often than in the country or in the suburbs, but to me, this almost seems absurd.
Your argument is that city kids go missing all the time, I just don't pay attention? As a casual citizen, if I watch local news, follow local websites, and belong to community Facebook pages, how dialed in do I have to be?
I mean, I pay attention to Amber Alerts. According to the Amber Alert Page, there have been 7 activated Amber Alerts in Ohio this year. Amber Alerts seem to focus on kids who have been actively snatched.
When I was a kid, my dear Grandmother used to have a police scanner actively running in the house. Do you have to be to that level of tuned in to know what's going on?
About 10 years ago, I remember WalMart used to have a missing kids billboard in front of the restroom. One day they quietly took down the display. I remember thinking "are there less missing kids, or does WalMart not want bum you out?"
In WalMart's defense, it's not their job to inform you about missing kids. In my mind, that's the job of the media.
Cleveland.com's argument may be that they can't report on missing kids every day. They report on the weather every day. They report on the lottery every day. During the Summer, they report on Guardian's baseball every day.
"The kids and their families have a right to privacy, we shouldn't know their business," is your argument?
As a society, how did we get so blasé about missing kids? At some point, if you're cleveland.com, you just have to at least ADMIT national publications are reporting this, right?
Right?
And why do I keep reading about how dangerous Cleveland is from a journalistic entity from Great Britain?