Convenient lies
The media already have a pretty low rating on the trust meter, and they are inherently resistant to accountability to their news-consuming public.
But at least they’re getting caught more these days, even in Canada. This article from the Canadian press pretty much nails it.
Readers of the National Post and The New York Times learned last week that by 2020, “China will be home to 300 million more men than women.” Unfortunately, the truth is only about one tenth as astonishing.
That’s why, as this story points out, media often don’t resort to the truth.
As the Times’ correction to the Reuters story that ran in both newspapers made clear, “The state news media predicted that by 2020 the country would have 30 million more men than women, not 300 million more.”
As it turns out, though, that wasn’t quite right either. According to the CIA World Fact Book’s 2006 population estimate, there are already 39 million more men than women in China. Is the country’s traditional preference for male children, now exacerbated by the one-child policy and increased termination of female fetuses, somehow going to shrink this imbalance in the next 13 years?
The answer makes a little more sense: China’s State Population and Family Planning Commission had actually projected the gap to exist among people of marriagable age.
See how you have to dig for the facts?
Media outlets are to some extent at the mercy of the various organizations that publish statistics, many of which are pursuing their own agendas and fighting against others. But in these recent cases, both Post and Star readers were left to their own devices.
And we pay to use their services?! Look at it as an exercise…not in absorbing the news, but in the skill of deciphering it. It’s a skill honed by reading the paper, or listening to TV.
Various organizations say poverty in Canada is around 15.5%; the Fraser Institute pegs it closer to 4.9%. The Post’s sources say home invasions doubled in the late 90s; StatsCan says they stayed the same or declined. Considering the fierce debate surrounding such issues, it seems simple attribution of such statistics might go a long way towards informing readers – and possibly defusing inter-newspaper warfare.
But consensus on poverty and crime figures seems unlikely to follow. As Homer Simpson said when asked to explain the 900% rise in “heavy sack beatings” since his vigilante group began patrolling the streets of Springfield, “People can come up with statistics to prove anything. Forty percent of all people know that.”
What makes humor funny is its element of truth.
