How does large news media shape how we interpret data?

Pew Research Center

In a recent report conducted and released by the FBI, according to their data, between 2019 and 2020 the United States experienced the greatest increase in violent crime rates in a single year span since 2015 to 2016. In this article from The New York Times, the author continued to reiterate that this was the sharpest increase from the 1990s, while in fact 2019-2020 only had less than one point more than the increase between 2015 and 2016 - this is violent crimes overall, not just murders. The Twitter thread included below outlines the incredible amount of journalistic malfeasance that occurred in this article. Even if I had not found this article via that Twitter thread I would still believe that this article should not have been published the way it was. 

The first thing I noticed was how sources cited in the beginning of the article continuously held that there was not a list of factors to pinpoint that led to the increase but then as you keep reading another source spouts of a list of reasons for the increase. And within this list, they all stem from anti-police rhetoric and attitudes. This is a dangerous and speculative and does little other than place ideas in the readers minds. Another aspect of the article that stuck out to me was how they framed the "sharp increase". If you manipulate the timeline of the graph (which is very easy to do on the FBI's website), you can see that crime is SO LOW compared to the 1990s. The Times article made it seem like crime and murders had had such an increase, and while they did not omit the level of crime today compared to the 90s, they buried that information in random one-liners beside "trusted sources" bashing reforms. 

Overall, this article is a dumpster fire of contradictory information and if someone does not critically read the article and then look at the data themselves, then they can very well believe the interpretation of the data set out by the Times. Headlines and renowned news sources shape the way readers interpret and understand data and it is dangerous and harmful to portray facts in such a way.

Alex Karakatsanis Twitter Thread

Scott Hechinger Twitter Thread


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

There is Still Hope for Local News Outlets

Image
Getty Editorial  As we have discussed a little throughout the semester, as the world becomes more and more connected, local news organizations become more and more nationalized. While this is still the exception and not the rule, as media corporations continue to amass organizations under their umbrellas, uniform and national reporting of local stories will be on the rise, but the Build Back Better Agenda is hoping to provide a boost to the industry as a whole, including the little guys.  In President Bidens multi-trillion dollar social relief package hoping to pass the Senate, there is a large sum of money for a relatively unpublicized sector: local news organizations. The relief package will set aside $1.67 billion over the next five years for outlets that primarily cover local news. If this seems too good to be true, it sort of is. The package is not disregarding national news organizations and media conglomerates as many of the local and regional outlets are actually under those co
Read more

Has influencing public policy has been made easier by social media?

Image
                                                            Mike Kai Chen for The New York Times It is no secret or surprise that social media and the fast spread of the internet has allowed the world to become more connected than ever before. In a study done two years ago by the Pew Research Center, they found that the internet and the advent of more communication technologies has allowed for greater impact on politics. This got me thinking about if the public is influencing policy more or if we are just more aware of decisions being made in the government. As I was contemplating these questions, Biden announced his plan to ramp up vaccine production as well as vaccine distribution around the globe . As pointed out in the article, this move was made amid recent outcries against the administration for the lack of a role the United States has played in increasing vaccine rates globally. Not only completed vaccine distribution but earlier this year when the United States and much of the
Read more