Is America really falling apart or is it suffering from media overload?

"Killers, robbers, drug dealers, rapists are running rampant in our streets and our country is falling apart," is pretty much the claim of one presidential candidate and his supporters this year. I and many others tend to question this position because statistics provided by the FBI show the Opposite of Donald J. Trump's claim. The question is that if the crime data gathered by the FBI shows a decrease in crime over the years then why do so many people not only believe Mr. Trump, but insist he is correct based on what they have seen in real life? That is a perplexing question but one that may have a simple explanation, at least to me it is simple.
It is true that the overall murder rate has decreased nation wide there are a few places where there has been a spike in murders such as Chicago. But still, the overall rate for murders and other crimes have been dropping and yet people believe it is increasing. Why? What if I tell you that there aren't more crimes you are just hearing more about crime? Sound counter intuitive? Not really. It is that your world has increased, or rather your "information world" has increased thanks to the Internet and 24/7 365 news.
I was born in the late 1960's when the sources of news was TV, Radio, and Newspapers. When I was very young it seemed I had a strange fascination with the evening news. I mean how many toddlers would be entertained by watching David Brinkley and John Chancellor at the news desk with Tom Brokaw reporting from the field?  I was probably the only 2 year old in America to have Vietnam flashbacks all from just watching the news. Anyway, with TV, radio, and print as your only sources of news you were limited to what crime reporting was deemed worthy of making national or world news. Most crimes you would hear about were local crimes and then only the major crimes. Now unless you lived in a large city there were few major crimes to report so you would not think much about crime. When the national news would come on you would hear about a murder in a big city or some place only if it involved someone famous or was extraordinarily gruesome, then you would think "I would hate to live there!" You see your information world was limited to your local area with the occasional intrusion from the outside by network news.
During the 1970's and 80's cable and satellite TV began to expand into more and more homes. (My family never had satellite but I had friends who did. The dishes were huge! I am talking contact ET huge!). Now with these new technologies you had access to more channels and soon you had 24 hour news channels like CNN and Headline News popping up (Thank you Ted Turner). Almost over night your information world expanded to cover much, much more so you would hear more reporting on major crimes but it was still weighed to determine how news worthy it would be. Now instead of hearing about a couple murders from around the country and the odd one locally you doubled and tripled those numbers. This also applied to the other major crimes.
So as the years past and more technologies were created our information world increased but with the rise of the Internet it exploded. Our information world encompasses our whole world now. It is not just the size of the new information world it is also its "never off" availability that changes our perception of major crimes and how often they take place. Years ago you may never have heard about a robbery that happened in a small town clear across the country or a murder of some non-famous person in a major city unless you lived there or close by, now it is part of news feeds and the stories are shared via social media so your information world is ridden with crime, but is your real world? Would you be exposed to the same amount of crime stories if you shrank your information world back to your local area? Most likely you would not. You would watch your local news hear about the occasional violent crime or theft and after awhile you would change your view on the frequency of major crimes. You may even overhear someone speaking about all the crime that is going on in the world and wonder what they are talking about, especially if you live in the same area. You see, in today's world people hear of crimes that occurred in other areas of the country and mentally group them all together and then lay that across the board so they see major crime everywhere and all the time. It is like this. A murder reported in one town, the first in decades, is lumped together with murders in other places, maybe the only ones in a long time, but suddenly these murders combined imply the murder rate of the first has increased corresponding to all the murders. Why? Because of nothing more than change in perception do to the increase of one's information world. Yes the first city had a murder, but the statistics would show there would not be a considerable increase in the murder rate, if there is any at all. If there was only one murder in the previous twenty years the odds are there may not be more than one murder in the next twenty years, all things being equal. Now with an significant increase in population you will see more crimes committed but if you factor in the increased population you will see the crime rate should stay the same. If you have one robbery per 100 people over a year (1%) and over the next year you increase the population to 500 and 5 robberies take place it will still be 1%. Of course there are other factors that way in but the overall premise is the same.
I wish I had the FBI numbers that show the national decrease in crime over the years but I am writing this in bed on a tablet but you can still go to the FBI's website or search on the web to find the statistics. You will see that nationally there has been a steady decrease in crime over the last 19 years or so. What makes it seem like crime is increasing? Just the amount of reporting on the Internet that we incorporate into our information world regardless of where the crimes took place.