Conference lgp30::christian-perspective

The media gets flak from the Right.  The media gets flak from the Left.

The Right claims that news journalists are predominantly humanists and that
how journalists select and editorialize their material is simply a reflection
of their godless perspective.  The Left claims that journalists are spoon fed
information (or disinformation, as Ollie North called it) by those in power.

There's probably some truth to both accusations.

I've recently heard that Pat Robertson is likely to become the new owner of
United Press International (UPI).  This should be interesting.

Peace,
Richard

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Subject: Robertson withdraws bid to buy all of UPI
Date: Wed, 10 Jun 92 9:21:58 PDT
 
	WASHINGTON (UPI) -- Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson, expressing a
``great deal of personal regret,'' said Wednesday he was withdrawing his
$6 million offer to buy all of United Press International.
	Robertson, however, said he was interested in one or two parts of the
84-year-old news service, including its name. He told a news conference
his modified offer would be put before U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Francis
Conrad in New York at 4 p.m. EDT but would not disclose the dollar
amount of his altered bid.
	Robertson said he wanted to provide enough money in the new proposal
``to make sure that the current staffers received a paycheck for their
work this two weeks and hopefully for two more weeks.''
	Pieter VanBennekom, UPI's president, expressed disappointment that
Robertson had dropped his offer for the entire news agency and said the
wire service would resume the search for a buyer.
	``The company is considering all of its options, including a shutdown
of operations,'' VanBennekom said.
	Robertson, the owner of the Christian Broadcasting Network, said the
decision to pull back the $6 million offer submitted during a bankruptcy
court auction last month was made after accountants and lawyers pored
over UPI's financial records and studied its client base.
	His bid was conditioned on a 30-day review of UPI's books and during
this period he provided the wire service with $300,000 for operating
expenses and payroll.
	``I am instructing my attorneys to modify our offer,'' Robertson told
a news conference. ``That is said in my own heart with a great deal of
personal regret.
	``With considerable personal regret I am instructing our attorneys to
terminate the negotiations of U.S. Media Corporation to purchase UPI
assets as authorized by the bankruptcy court in Rutland, Vermont, in
early May.''
	Robertson submitted the high bid May 12 for all of UPI's assets and
eclipsed four other offers, which were for pieces of the news service.
	While complimenting the wire service's staff as ``very, very hard
working,'' Robertson said UPI's news-gathering equipment is outdated and
that the cost would be very high to rebuild the company into the type of
operation needed to provide clients with the depth and breadth of news
coverage they demand.
	``We have concluded that there are not sufficient synergies with our
existing and planned operations to justify the significant investment
that would have to be made to operate UPI at the standards of
performance which we aspire to maintain,'' he said.
	The Robertson family holds the majority stake in International Family
Entertainment Inc., which owns The Family Channel, a 24-hour mixture of
original family-oriented programming and reruns. Robertson also has a
stable of radio properties, which includes several individual stations,
the Florida Radio Network and the CBN Radio Network, targeted primarily
at stations with religious formats.
	VanBennekom said he could not say what would happen to UPI's
approximately 500 employees worldwide.
	Robertson was not specific when asked about what parts of UPI he
wanted. He expressed interest in the name of the venerable wire service
and UPI's radio properties.
	``I'm particularly interested in the transmission of news, pictures
for television,'' he said, without elaborating.
	In 1982, Scripps Howard sold the news agency and the company has had
three owners since, going down a rough financial path and filing for
Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 1985 and again last Aug. 28.
	UPI asked the bankruptcy judge in April to auction its assets in the
hope the move would force anyone interested in buying the wire service
to make an offer.
	United Press was founded July 15, 1907, by publisher E.W. Scripps to
compete with The Associated Press. It merged in 1958 with William
Randolph Hearst's International News Service to form United Press
International.

So, is it better to be considered pathetic over being considered a jerk?
Or is it better to be considered a jerk over being considered pathetic?

Note 942.39
    
>    I look at Limbaugh as another source of information...that is all.  I
>    also use CSPAN, WSJ, USA TODAY, and many other sources.  

>    I look at the liberal establishment not as jerks as you do.  I see them 
>    as a sincere bunch with unfortunate delusions of stability, that's all.
>    I see many of them as consisting very little in substance, that's why
>    they are such strong proponents of the fairness doctrine.  They're so
>    mad that nobody is listening to them that they need government mandate
>    to make their voice heard.
    
>    I feel sorry for them.  

    
    I'm reminded of a Russian saying I learned about during a "History of
    the Soviet Union" class regarding their two news publications: Investia
    (News) and Pravda (Truth).  That is:
    
            "There is no news in the truth and no truth in the news."
    
    A few other words of wisdom that my sister imparted to my neice after
    my neice got a front-row sit to how the media can twist and deform
    the truth:
    
            "The media is a source of news, it's not necessarily a
             good source."
    
    Jill  :-)

    If you are tired of editorialism and manipulation in the American 
    press and are looking for alternate news sources, give these a try:
    
    IntelWeb - Intelligence Web Report
    ----------------------------------
    http://www.awpi.com/IntelWeb
    
    London Daily Telegraph
    ----------------------
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk
    
    Jerusalem Post
    --------------
    http://www.jpost.co.il/ 
    
    Washington Weekly
    -----------------
    http://dolphin.gulf.net
    
    Newspaper Index
    --------------	
    http://www.yahoo.com/business_and_economy/business_directory/
    companies/media/newspapers

    Does anyone consider the news broadcasted by Pat Robertson's CBN free
    of "editorialism and manipulation"?
    
    Shalom,
    Richard
    

    	I've never seen it (don't get cable) but I doubt that it is free
    	of editorialism or spin.  EVERYTHING has a spin -- network,
    	conservative, liberal, PBS, Christian, and even the Pope.
    
    	As for manipulation, well, I think that's more a matter of
    	interpretation.

    There is no doubt Robertson has a spin or a slant on what he reports. 
    I don't think Robertson ever claimed to be unbiased unlike Brokaw and
    company.
    
    -Jack

    
    I think it's virtually impossible to not have at least a small amount
    of personal opinion appear in any news media, because we are human, 
    and we all have our points of view.  I don't believe there's any such 
    thing as totally objective reporting, though it is an ideal that the 
    journalists who possess a lion's share of integrity at least try to 
    strive for.
    
    Manipulation, on the other hand, is a deliberate attempt to sway the 
    audience in a certain direction, and I personally think that Robertson
    and many others are guilty of doing that.  'Intent' is a hard thing to
    determine, but given the little I have seen of him, even I - a mere 
    novice at picking up on the techniques of audience manipulation - most
    definitely got that impression.
    
    Cindy

 ZZ   Manipulation, on the other hand, is a deliberate attempt to sway
 ZZ   the audience in a certain direction, and I personally think that
 ZZ   Robertson and many others are guilty of doing that.  
    
    "and many others"/  I'm glad you used this as a qualifier.  
    
    Robertson is head of the Christian Coalition in funding.  He has a
    fundamentalist view, he is an evangelist and a public figure.  Most
    people KNOW where he stands so one can expect his bias to show.
    
    Dan Rather and Tom Brokaw are different however.  They represent their
    networks and affiliates and are considered to be general news
    reporters.  They claim to be objective and based on what I heard last
    week, it appeared these guys would love nothing more than to see a
    major riot break out in LA. 
    
    It proves they're racist themselves by assuming they could incite a
    riot.  The way they were speaking, one could assume the worst.  I
    believe the intent was there.
    
    -Jack
    
     

    
    Jack,
    
    >I believe intent was there.
    
    Yes, exactly my point.  It's not really possible to know if it's
    absolutely true, but if we can spot the obvious techniques of audience
    manipulation, then there is a good chance that there is deliberate
    manipulation going on. Since I have seen evidence of that on
    Robertson's program, I tend to believe that he is guilty of intent to
    deliberately sway the audience. 
    
    When I was referring more to the 'lion's share of integrity', I was
    thinking more along the lines of Walter Cronkite, Bill Moyers, and Hugh
    Downs.  I don't consider Rather or Brokaw in that circle.  
    
    Cindy

 ZZ    I tend to believe that he is guilty of intent to
 ZZ       deliberately sway the audience. 
    
    I would not define guilt as an indictment in this case.  Robertson is
    very open about his beliefs from the beginning; therefore, his intent
    would only be what one would expect of a conservative religious
    individual.
    
    -Jack

    Robertson also does not anchor the news his operation presents, giving
    it the appearance of being "objective."
    
    One need not have cable, at least, not locally.  The 700 Club is aired
    regularly on broadcast television.
    
    Richard
    

    The news time they give is during their show, The 700 Club, which is a
    Christian talk show.  I would put it in league with a show like 20/20
    and not with NBC Nightly News.  I would say the ratings for the 700
    Club are predominantly a Christian audience.
    
    -Jack

    I'm willing to go one further.  Based on what we read here and what we
    read overseas, and the general ignorance/apathy of Americans, it
    appears that our government has quite a hand in what gets reported.
    
    Mike

    re: .9
    
    The difference between Robertson and your average news anchor, is that
    Robertson makes no pretense of delivering news without a spin.  His
    agenda is clear before hand- to deliver news that mass media will not,
    with a Christian slant.
    
    The mass-media news anchors are supposed to be purely objective (unless
    they are editorializing), as they make a pretense of being objective.  
    
    If they would just come out and state their position, as does
    Robertson, then I would at least call them intellectually honest.  As
    it is now, I can call them nothing but agenda spinners- and dishonest
    ones at that.  They simply are not trustworthy, as someone else is
    holding their leash, pushing an agenda off on the public (a form of
    brainwashing, IMO, and very effective from what I can see).
    
    
    -steve

re Note 464.16 by CSOA1::LEECH:

>     If they would just come out and state their position, as does
>     Robertson, then I would at least call them intellectually honest.  

        Perhaps it's like the expanding universe -- wherever you are
        *appears* to be at the center, with everything else appearing
        to be traveling away from you.

        The analogue in political position would be "whoever agrees
        with you is at (or near) the center, whereas everyone else is
        biased."

        I am quite certain that the news media personalities whom you
        call "dishonest" and "untrustworthy" have no intention to be
        so and believe that they are as neutral and unbiased as
        humanly possible.  Quite likely they would think that your
        favorite news outlets (whatever they might be) are biased
        and, perhaps, "dishonest" and "untrustworthy".


>     it is now, I can call them nothing but agenda spinners- and dishonest
>     ones at that.  They simply are not trustworthy, as someone else is
>     holding their leash, pushing an agenda off on the public (a form of
>     brainwashing, IMO, and very effective from what I can see).
  
        I deeply resent the implication, Steve, that people who
        disagree with you must be "brainwashed" and/or on somebody's
        leash.

        Bob

    But that's the point Bob.  If I watch Pat Robertson, then I at least
    know I'm on a leash.
    
    -Jack

>   But that's the point Bob.  If I watch Pat Robertson, then I at least
>   know I'm on a leash.


if you need a leash so bad then i am sure a sadist is easily found to
put one around you and to massage your masochistic nerves!


:-)


andreas.

    Hey whatever! 

hahahaha! does this mean that this pat robertson(sp?) has the
intellectual relevance of a massage parlour? 



andreas.

    The Intelligence Web Report had an interesting interview with James
    Harff, director of Ruder & Finn Global Public Affairs in February of '94.
    This firm currently represents the Bosnian and Croatian governments.

Harff: For 18 months [Oct 93] we have been working for the republics of Croatia
and Bosnia Herzegovina, as well as for the [Muslim] opposition in Kosovo
[part of Serbia].  Throughout this period we had many successes.

Q: What are your methods of operation?

Harff: the essential tools in our work are a card file, a computer, and a fax.
The card file contains a few hundred names of journalists, politicians,
academicians, and representatives of humanitarian organizations.  The computer
goes through the card files according to correlated subjects, coming up with
very effective targets.  The computer is tied into a fax.  In this way, we can
disseminate information in a few minutes to those we think will react
[positively].  Our job is to assure that the arguments for our side will be
the first to be expressed.  Speed is vital, because items favourable to us must
be settled in public opinion.  The first statement counts.  The retractions
have no effect.

Q: How often do you intervene?

Harff: Quantity is not important.  You have to intervene at the right time
with the right person.  From June to September, we organized 30 meetings with
the main press agencies, as well as meetings between Bosnian officials and
[U.S. Vice President] Al Gore, Lawrence Eagleburger, and 10 influential
senators, among them George Mitchell and Robert Dole.  We also sent out 13
exclusive news items, 37 last minute faxes, 17 official letters, and 8
official reports.  We placed 20 telephone calls to White House staff, 20 to
senators, and close to 100 journalists, editors, newscasters, and other
influential people in the media.

Q: What achievement were you most proud of?

Harff: To have managed to put Jewish opinion on our side.  The Croatian and
Bosnian past was marked by real and cruel antisemitism.  Tens of thousands of
Jews perished in Croatian camps.  There was every reason for intellectuals and
Jewish organizations to be hostile towards the Croats and Bosnians.  Our
challenge was to reverse this attitude.  And we have succeeded masterfully.

At the beginning of August 1992, the New York "Newsday" came out with the affair
of [Serb] concentration camps.  We jumped at the opportunity immediately.  We
outwitted three big Jewish organizations - The B'nai Brith Anti-Defamation
League, the American Jewish committee, and the American Jewish Congress.  We
suggested to them to publish an advertisement in the "New York Times" and to
organize demonstrations outside the United Nations.

This was a tremendous coup.  When the Jewish organizations entered the game on
the side of the [Muslim] Bosnians, we could promptly equate the Serbs with the
Nazis in the public mind.

Nobody understood what was happening in Yugoslavia.  But by a single move we
were able to present a simple story of good guys and bad guys which would
hereafter play itself.

Almost immediately there was a clear change of language in the press, with the
use of words with high emotional content, such as "ethnic cleansing,"
"concentration camps," etc. which evoked images of Nazi Germany and the gas
chambers of Auschwitz.  The emotional charge was so powerful that nobody could
go against it.

Q: But when you did all this you had no proof that what you said was true.  You
only had the article in "Newsday"!

Harff: Our work is not to verify information.  We are not equipped for that.
Our work is to accelerate the circulation of information favourable to us, to
aim at judiciously chosen targets.  We did not confirm the existence of death
camps in Bosnia, we just made it known that "Newsday" affirmed it.

Q: Are you aware that you took on a grave responsibility?

Harff: We are professionals.  We had a job to do and we did it.  We are not paid
to be moral.

    
    There was a 400 line article on something similar in another
    conference that was equally as telling.
    
    Mods - would it be alright to include it in one note here, or should I
    break it up?  (Just asking for sake of time.)
    
    Cindy

    re: .17
    
>        The analogue in political position would be "whoever agrees
>        with you is at (or near) the center, whereas everyone else is
>        biased."

    Nonsense.  I make no bones about my position being to the right of
    center.  "Center" today, being relatively liberal, even, as I see it.
    
>        I am quite certain that the news media personalities whom you
>        call "dishonest" and "untrustworthy" have no intention to be
>        so and believe that they are as neutral and unbiased as
>        humanly possible.  Quite likely they would think that your
>        favorite news outlets (whatever they might be) are biased
>        and, perhaps, "dishonest" and "untrustworthy".

    They report what they are given to report.  They are simply the face to
    my distrust.  Some *may* be quite biased, but for the most part, I
    think they simply do as they are told.  I do not intend to judge the
    news personalities personally.
    
    This distrust is earned, however, in spades.  A simple look at the
    obvious spin put on the gun control issue by the major media outlets
    (including many newspapers and magazine) will back this up.  If you can 
    watch/read mass media spin and honestly say that there is no anti-gun 
    agenda being pushed, then I have some nice swampland in Florida I'd like 
    to sell you.

>        I deeply resent the implication, Steve, that people who
>        disagree with you must be "brainwashed" and/or on somebody's
>        leash.

    Then you are taking my notes way too personally.  My brainwash comment was 
    purely generic in nature, as a commentary on what I see going on around 
    me.  
    
    However, your own comment "and/or on somebody's leash" is very
    interesting.  Perhaps you feel that the talking heads of most TV anchor
    news shows DO disagree with me?  If so, you support my very point that
    they are NOT unbiased.
    
    Real news is made up of facts.  Once spin is put on them, it is not 
    longer news, but an agenda.  Not all agendas are bad, but I prefer a
    neutral presentation of fact (ALL the facts) rather than being spoon
    fed someone's agenda.  As a matter of fact, I rarely watch TV news
    these days, as it too frequently insults my intelligence.
    
    
    
    -steve

re Note 464.24 by CSOA1::LEECH:

>     This distrust is earned, however, in spades.  A simple look at the
>     obvious spin put on the gun control issue by the major media outlets
>     (including many newspapers and magazine) will back this up.  If you can 
>     watch/read mass media spin and honestly say that there is no anti-gun 
>     agenda being pushed, then I have some nice swampland in Florida I'd like 
>     to sell you.

        I see mostly honest reporting of the anti-gun-control lobby. 
        Is there an "agenda"?  Well, if one believes that totally
        uncontrolled gun availability is truly irresponsible, and if
        that same one is a journalist (who does indeed have an
        agenda: to report what they see to be true), then it might
        come across as an "agenda".  I'd guess you'd have to say,
        then, that these same persons had an "agenda" to make OJ look
        guilty (by reporting the evidence) and to make hurricane Opal
        look like a disaster.

        Given your general attitudes towards the world around you,
        Steve, I'd be amazed if you didn't see "agendas" almost
        everywhere (or dupes, like me I suppose).

>     However, your own comment "and/or on somebody's leash" is very
>     interesting.  Perhaps you feel that the talking heads of most TV anchor
>     news shows DO disagree with me?  If so, you support my very point that
>     they are NOT unbiased.

        ?

        Bob

>    Nonsense.  I make no bones about my position being to the right of
>    center.  "Center" today, being relatively liberal, even, as I see it.

As I (and a handful of others) see it, the Right has simply moved further
to the Right.  Some have even labelled George Bush a liberal.

Richard

    
    Re.24
    
    >Real news is based on facts.
    
    And unfortunately, a lot of the 'facts' aren't even real...
         
    I'll get that article and post it in sections.
    
    Cindy

Copied from the CATO Institute WWW (a Libertarian think tank)
    
Counting the Errors of Modern Journalism 
    
Brian Doherty

Despite all the rhetoric from Thomas Jefferson down to the latest
self-important musings of journalists about journalism's being the first,
best hope for a healthy polity, your newspaper is lying to you. While
assuring you that it provides precise information about public policy
issues, in many cases it is only pushing speculation and rumor in the
guise of fact. Most of the time you have no independent way to confirm its
claims, so how can you tell when a newspaper is lying? 

Here's a hint: watch out for the numbers. Newspapers are filled with
contextless reports of the latest things government officials have said or
decided. But newspapers do like to throw in a number now and then to add
verisimilitude to the tales they tell. 

Knowledge of the media's inability to get it straight, especially when
dealing with numbers and statistics, has become widespread enough to
inspire a widely reviewed book--Tainted Truth: The Manipulation of Fact in
America by Cynthia Crossen. It has also given rise to a new magazine, the
quarterly Forbes MediaCritic, the latest addition to the Forbes family of
publications. 

While ideologues of all persuasions like to blame media inaccuracies on
political biases, the causes of journalism's troubles are, unfortunately,
inherent in the way daily newspapers, those first drafts of history, are
written: hurriedly and by generalists who, even if they are unfailingly
scrupulous (which can't always be assumed), are often ignorant of the
topics on which they write and depend blindly on what others tell
them--and what others tell them is very often biased. Unfortunately, those
first drafts of history are all most laypersons read. 

The Problems with Numbers 

Our intellectual culture is drunk on numbers, addicted to them: we need
them in every situation, we feel utterly dependent on them. As sociologist
Richard Gelles aptly put it in a July 25, 1994, Newsweek story on the
media's problems with numbers, "Reporters don't ask, `How do you know it?'
They're on deadline. They just want the figures so they can go back to
their word processors." The culture of the poll dominates: the foolish
notion that not only every fact but every thought, whim, and emotion of
the populace can be stated in scientifically valid and valuable numbers. 

The lust for numbers can, at its best, lead people to do hard research and
dig up interesting and useful information. More often, however, it leads
to dignifying guesses with misleadingly precise numbers. For example, it
wasn't enough to know that people were dying in Somalia; as Michael Maren
reports in the Fall 1994 Forbes MediaCritic, reporters felt it necessary
to latch onto some relief workers' guesses and repeat them over and over,
only occasionally letting slip honest acknowledgments that no one really
knew how many people were actually dying and that no one was taking the
trouble to attempt accurate counts. 

The obsession with numbers leads to particularly egregious errors in
reports on economic figures and aggregates and the federal budget. Those
errors include calling spending that doesn't equal what had been planned a
"cut" in spending, even if more is being spent than the year before;
relying on static economic analysis, especially when calculating the
effects of tax increases and their concomitant revenues (because they
assume that people do not change their behavior when their taxes are
raised, members of Congress and reporters make grievously wrong
predictions about expected revenues); and relying uncritically on
numerical tools such as the Consumer Price Index. 

Especially during the 1992 election, "quintile" analysis of the effects of
the Reagan-Bush years on income and tax-burden equality abounded, with
hardly any explanation of the complications of such analyses. Those
complications include the fact that when people in lower income quintiles
become richer, they often move into a higher quintile rather than buoy the
average of the lower one. Yet income added to the highest quintile can do
nothing but increase that quintile's average income. That creates a
misleading picture of the rich getting much richer while the poor
stagnate. 

Quintile analysis is also static, but income mobility is common in
America, so it's not always the same people who languish in lower
quintiles or whoop it up at the top. And quintile analysis often relies on
households, not individuals-- the top quintile can have more than 20
percent of Americans, the bottom less than 20 percent. But all of those
complications are overlooked in the media's craving for numbers to toss
around. 

The media even ignore the fact that "counts" of macroeconomic variables
can change retroactively--1993 data on 1992 quantities can be different
from 1994 data. As an example, in 1993 the Bureau of Labor Statistics
listed Arkansas as the state with the highest percentage rise (3 percent)
in nonfarm employment from July 1991 to July 1992. Candidate Clinton
touted that percentage in campaign ads. But by March 1994 the facts had
changed. Although Arkansas was then thought to have had a 3.7 percent rise
in employment during the 1991-92 period, it ranked behind Montana's 4.22
percent and Idaho's 4.21. 

Macroeconomic aggregates, such as gross national product, on which the
media often rely for numerical ballast, are often riddled with conceptual
problems, such as that of counting as additions to our national product
any cash transactions, including the classic example of neighbors' paying
each other to mow each other's lawns, and ignoring any noncash transaction
that adds to economic well- being. Other economic numbers bandied about by
the media, such as unemployment rates, job growth, and the "cost" of
various tax increases or cuts, are often derived from random samplings,
self- reported information, and guesswork. Economics is a study of human
action, not of numbers; the press's over dependence on frequently dubious
aggregates helps disguise the problem and muddles readers' understanding
of what economics--and prosperity--is really about. 

(continued) 

Copied from the CATO Institute WWW (a Libertarian think tank)
    
Counting the Errors of Modern Journalism (cont'd)
    
Brian Doherty

Where Do the Numbers Come from?

There are many ways to mislead while allegedly presenting accurate counts
or measures to the public. The most sinister is to simply make up numbers
or make completely bald-faced guesses. That happens more often than you
might think. The demand for information has far outstripped the supply.
Coming up with reliable numbers to support all the things that journalists
want to say and the public wants to know is often prohibitively expensive,
in money or effort, or both. But the misuse and misunderstanding of
numbers lead to erroneous reporting. 

The total number of breast cancer victims has become a matter of much
concern since the National Cancer Institute and the American Cancer
Society frightened the world with the declaration that American women face
a one-in-eight chance of contracting breast cancer. That scary figure,
however, applies only to women who have already managed to live to age 95;
one out of eight of them will most likely contract breast cancer.
According to the NCI's own figures, a 25-year-old woman runs only a
1-in-19,608 risk. 

Those very precise figures are themselves based on a phony notion: that we
know how many people have breast or any other cancer. As two journalists
concerned about cancer admitted in the Nation (September 26, 1994), "Not
only is there no central national agency to report cancer cases to . . .
but there is no uniform way that cases are reported, no one specialist
responsible for reporting the case." So any discussion of cancer rates in
the United States is based on guesswork, and one can only hope that the
guesswork is based on some attempt to be true to the facts as they are
known. 

In the case of other health threats, such as AIDS, we know that isn't the
case. In The Myth of Heterosexual AIDS, journalist Michael Fumento
documented the discrepancy between the rhetoric about the plague like
threat of AIDS to the nongay and non-drug-using populace and official
statistics on the actual prevalence of the syndrome, which indicated that
no more than 0.02 percent of people who tested HIV positive were not in
those risk groups. (And even such heterosexual AIDS cases as are recorded
run into a self-reporting problem: many people may not want to admit to
anyone that they have had gay sex or used drugs.) As Fumento explained,
projections of the future growth of the AIDS epidemic (even ones that were
not hysterical pure guesses tossed out by interest groups) were often
based on straight extrapolations of earlier doubling times for the
epidemic (which inevitably--for any disease--lead to the absurd result of
everyone on the planet and then some dying of the disease) or cobbled
together from guess piled on guess. Even when the Centers for Disease
Control would lower earlier estimates on the basis of new information, or
make clearly unofficial speculations about higher numbers, journalists
would continue to report the higher and more alarming numbers. 

In the case of figures about AIDS in Africa, even the most basic numbers
are not to be trusted. Journalist Celia Farber documented in Spin magazine
how African health officials inflate the number of deaths from the
complications of AIDS, both because AIDS cases attract foreign aid money,
whereas traditional African disease and death do not, and because there is
no accurate method of counting. 

One relief worker told Farber that counts of children orphaned by AIDS in
an African village "were virtually meaningless, I made them up myself . .
. then, to my amazement, they were published as official figures in the
WHO [World Health Organization] . . . book on African AIDS. . . . The
figure has more than doubled, based on I don't know what evidence, since
these people have never been here. . . . If people die of malaria, it is
called AIDS, if they die of herpes it is called AIDS. I've even seen
people die in accidents and it's been attributed to AIDS. The AIDS figures
out of Africa are pure lies." 

In his autobiography, novelist Anthony Burgess gives further insight into
the generation of "official" figures. He tells of creating completely
fraudulent records of the classes he supposedly taught fellow soldiers
while stationed in Gibraltar during World War II. His bogus "statistics
were sent to the War Office. These, presumably, got into official records
which nobody read." For the sake of accuracy, we can only hope so. But if
a journalist got hold of those numbers, he'd be apt to repeat them. 

Similarly farcical figures are taken completely seriously by journalists.
For example, activist Mitch Snyder's assertion that the United States
suffered the presence of 3 million homeless people became common wisdom
for the bulk of the 1980s. Snyder's figure was made up; he simply assumed
that 1 percent of Americans were homeless to get an initial number of 2.2
million in 1980, then arbitrarily decided that since he knew the problem
was getting worse, the number would hit 3 million by 1983. He claimed to
be working from extrapolations based on reports from fellow homeless
activists around the country, but there was no counting, no surveying, no
extrapolation behind his assertion. And yet most major American newspapers
reported the number; it became part of our received cultural wisdom. 

Copied from the CATO Institute WWW (a Libertarian think tank)
    
Counting the Errors of Modern Journalism (cont'd)
    
Brian Doherty

In her recent book, Who Stole Feminism? How Women Have Betrayed Women,
Christina Hoff Sommers actually tried to track to their sources numbers
spread by feminist activists. One of the much- reported stories she
debunked was that 150,000 women a year die of anorexia, which an outraged
Gloria Steinem reported in her popular book Revolution from Within.
Steinem cited another popular feminist tome by Naomi Wolf as her source;
Wolf cited a book about anorexia written by a women's studies academic,
which cited the American Anorexia and Bulimia Center. Sommers actually
checked with that group and discovered that all they'd said was that many
women are anorexic. Oops. 

Another feminist canard is that domestic violence is responsible for more
birth defects than all other causes combined. Time and many newspapers had
ascribed that finding to a March of Dimes report. Sommers tracked the
assertion back through three sources, beginning with the Time reporter,
and discovered that it was the result of a misunderstanding of something
that had been said in the introduction of a speaker at a 1989
conference--no such March of Dimes report existed. Still, the errors of
Time and the Boston Globe and the Dallas Morning News are in more clip
files and data banks than is Sommers's debunking. The march of that
particular error will doubtless continue. 

A third famous feminist factoid is that Super Bowl Sunday sees a 40
percent rise in cases of wife beating. That claim, said to be supported by
a university study, was made in an activist press conference. (The story
was also spread by a group ironically named Fairness and Accuracy in
Reporting.) Similar claims began coming from other sources. Ken Ringle of
the Washington Post took the time to double-check them and found that the
university study's authors denied that their study said any such thing and
that the other sources that claimed to have independent confirmation of
the "fact" refused to disclose their data. When a concerned activist makes
up a number, few bother to be skeptical, and credulous reporting tends to
drown out the few debunkers. 

Unfortunately, erroneous numbers in journalism are not always the result
of sincere attempts to quantify the relevant data. If you can't imagine
someone's making the effort to really count something, and if you can
imagine any reason for the source's having an ulterior motive, best take
the number with a large grain of salt. This is not a call for ad hominem
attacks; it is merely a warning about when to look especially askance at
numbers. Even when one is following what seems on its face to be
defensible standards of sample and extrapolation, ludicrous results can
ensue. For example, Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation wrote that
22,000 Americans below the poverty line had hot tubs, and many
conservative publications uncritically trumpeted the figure. But Rector's
figure was "extrapolated" from one case in a survey sample. It's
disingenuous to claim that because one poor family in a sample of 10,000
has a hot tub, 22,000 poor families have hot tubs. 

Another example of numbers being attached to the uncounted, and probably
uncountable, is the debate over species extinctions. Economist Julian
Simon has explained that the conventionally accepted figures on the number
of species disappearing yearly are based on no counts and no
extrapolations from past knowledge; they are based on guesses about the
current rate of extinction, and that rate is arbitrarily increased to
produce the frightening number of 40,000 per year. Norman Myers, one of
the leading promulgators of that figure, admits that "we have no way of
knowing the actual current rate of extinction in tropical forest, nor can
we even make an accurate guess." Yet he is willing to make guesses about
future rates. 

Another much-touted scare figure, on workplace violence, was recently
debunked in the pages of the Wall Street Journal. Reporter Erik Larson
found that reports and statistics on the prevalence of workplace violence
were shoddy or misleading in various respects. One report, which concluded
that workers have a one-in-four chance of being attacked or threatened at
work, was based on the replies of only 600 workers, who represented only
29 percent of the people whom the survey had tried to reach, which made
the groups largely self- selected within the original sample.
Statisticians frown, with reason, on self-selected samples, which are very
likely to be biased. 

Copied from the CATO Institute WWW (a Libertarian think tank)
    
Counting the Errors of Modern Journalism (cont'd - last)
    
Brian Doherty

Larson also found that a Bureau of Labor Statistics report, which said
that homicide is the second most frequent cause of death in the workplace,
far from referring to coworkers or disgruntled ex- coworkers blasting away
at their comrades, showed that three- quarters of the deaths occurred
during robberies, and that many others involved police or security guards,
whose jobs obviously are dangerous. But the media, and an industry of
self-serving workplace violence consultants, inspired by half-understood
studies and vivid memories of crazed postal workers, created an aura of
offices as the Wild, Wild West that caught the imagination of many. In
this case, data were not so much bogus or warped as wildly misinterpreted.

Checking the Checkers 

It might seem paradoxical to condemn journalists for incessantly parroting
errors when it is journalists themselves who occasionally expose errors.
After all, who else would? The problem is, they don't do it nearly enough,
and no one else ever does. Even though Larson's story appeared in the
October 13, 1994, Wall Street Journal, it's a given that many other
writers and TV reporters will have missed it and sometime in the future
will again parrot false suppositions about the danger of mortal violence
in the workplace. 

The culture of journalism is based on the principle of the citation or
quote: if someone else said it, or wrote it, it's okay to repeat it.
Almost any editor or writer would scoff at that brash formulation. After
all, journalists pride themselves on their withering skepticism, their
credo of "if your mother says she loves you, check it out." But the reader
would be terribly naive to believe that journalists, under the crush of
daily deadlines, under the pressure of maintaining long-term relationships
with sources, and occasionally under the spell of ideology, always meet
that standard. In the future, you can count on it, someone will go back to
some story about workplace violence, or the homeless, or wife beating,
written before the debunking was done, and come to an incorrect
conclusion. Dogged checking of sources is rare indeed. 

I recently was intrigued by a figure in our self-styled paper of record,
the New York Times. In an October 25 article about the miserable state of
Iraq after years of international embargo, the author, Youssef M. Ibrahim,
stated that, according to UNICEF, "in the last year there has been a 9
percent rise in malnutrition among Iraqi infants." 

That figure struck me as somewhat absurd, a foolhardy attempt to assert
precise knowledge in a situation where obtaining it would be extremely
difficult, if not impossible. I tried to track the figure back to its
source through the UNICEF bureaucracy. (There is a practical reason why
many journalists end up accepting things at face value: the tracking of
figures, especially through international bureaucracies, can be harrying
and time-consuming indeed.) I was rewarded; although my initial
supposition--that any alleged count was probably of dubious value--is
probably true, I discovered that the "paper of record" couldn't even read
the UNICEF report right. 

What UNICEF had actually said, with even more absurd precision, was that
the total rate of--not the increase in-- malnutrition among infants under
one year old was 9.2 percent--a figure that seems shockingly low for an
essentially Third World country suffering under an international embargo.
It turned out that the survey was not done by UNICEF, as the Times had
reported, but by UNICEF in collaboration with the government of Iraq--as
almost anything done in Iraq probably must be. Precise figures from lands
with tyrannical governments should never be trusted. And it should be
remembered that in any hierarchy, even if the person at the top doesn't
have the literal power of life and death over those on the bottom, there's
a general tendency to tell those higher up only what they want to hear. 

Given the preceding examples, you'd think that constant checking and
rechecking of the sources of claims would be the rule in journalism.
Unfortunately, it is not. Nor, apparently, is it in science. In Betrayers
of the Truth, William Broad and Nicholas Wade reported on fraud and
deceit--and acceptance of the same--in the scientific establishment. They
found that, like journalism's conceit about checking on whether your
mother loves you, science's conceit of being built on an elaborate system
of cross checking and confirming the results of others is mostly a myth.
Hardly anyone ever checks what other people claim to have found or done. 

All too often readers assume that everyone is doing his work scrupulously
and well, but unfortunately, that's not always the case, as Broad and
Wade, Sommers, Fumento, Larson, Farber, and others have shown. Readers
should be much more skeptical than they are. 

Almost every time I read a newspaper story about a topic of which I have
personal knowledge, or about an event that I've witnessed, I find
errors--sometimes in minor details, sometimes in key ones. Almost everyone
I've asked about this says the same. But our knowledge of journalistic
error in a few specific cases doesn't translate into a strong general
skepticism. 

Total skepticism is probably impossible. But greater awareness of the
sorts of errors journalists tend to make can only help. Watch out for
macroeconomic aggregates; try to figure out where huge counts are coming
from and how they are being made; try to check the methodology and
phrasing of polls; check on the self-interest of the groups that
promulgate scary numbers; and remember that scary stories make great copy
and should be mistrusted all the more for that reason. 

If journalism were merely entertainment, this wouldn't be so important.
But despite how bad they are at it, journalists' conceit about their key
role in public policy is, unfortunately, true. Bad information can only
lead to bad policy. The first step in an intelligent approach to public
policy is to get the facts as straight as we can, even when we don't have
precise numbers. 

                                                               
    With all that said, I recall something that Scott Peck wrote in one of
    his books, that during the Vietnam war when he was in the Army, he 
    closely tracked stories about the war that were written in the papers 
    - things like planes being shot down, etc. - and finally came to the
    conclusion that someone was lying.  He concluded that he would never
    again trust the media to provide completely factual information.
    
    I have my own media stories to fall back on when it comes to biased
    reporting.  I was directly involved with a Hindu conference back
    in 1993 - working on the the conference steering committee itself, and
    literally lived with the key people behind the entire event for many 
    months, since I was one of them (the only non-Hindu).  I personally 
    knew exactly what was going on in all areas, because I attended all 
    the meetings.  And yet there were key journalists - especially at the
    Washington Post - who wrote such unbelievably biased reports on the 
    conference (anti-Hindu), that you would not even recognize it as the 
    same conference.  I was even in one of the press conferences given by
    the president of the organization - and also a good friend of mine - 
    and it was so obvious that the journalists had their own agendas by 
    the kinds of questions they were asking.  It was quite an experience.
    So, I don't believe much of what I read either, these days.
    
    Cindy

    McNeil/Lehrer and CSPAN....trust no other!

    .33
    
    I appreciate the conservative commentaries of Richard Rodriguez
    on McNeil/Lehrer.  The man speaks with the imagery of a mystic.
    
    Richard