A little math test

A headline on Yahoo! Finance reads:

American families spent 16% more on college this year

Just what does it mean?

Did all the families who spent money on college last year spend 16% more this year?

Or:

Did 16% more families spend money on college this year?

The article does mention that tuition only rose about 2%, and it does mention that some families are spending more because they can afford to.

So, the short answer is that more analysis is needed and that headline writers have to be careful of their wording.  Good journalism is factual, not sensational.

Je suis Charlie!

On n’a pas besoin d’en dire plus!

I am Charlie!

There is no need to say more!

Just who is "The Media"?

I was in a University for Senior class on Social Justice this morning.  In one discussion, several people complained about "the media" not reporting many aspects of the news, for example, the number of civilian deaths in Iraq.

From my iPad, I searched the New York Times for "iraq civilian death" and received a list of over 31,000 articles.  I told the class this number and read the five headlines that appeared on my screen:

"A Grim Portrait of Civilian Deaths in Iraq", 2010-10-22
"W.H.O. Says Iraq Civilian Death Toll Higher Than Cited", 2008-01-10
"Civilian Death Toll Reaches New High in Iraq, U.N. Says", 2008-11-23
"Civilian toll in Iraq increased in November"
"Civilian deaths in Iraq decrease significantly in one month"

The text shown for the last gives the lower figure as 922!

I did the same search for the Duluth News Tribune; nothing was shown from its entire archive.  If I searched for "Iraq death" I received 17 items.  One of these from 2006-11-10 gave an Iraqi Health Ministry estimate of 150,000 civilian war deaths.

But we shouldn't fault the DNT too much for this lack; it is not a national paper like the NYT and focuses more of its news on local and state events.

Many of these critics probably watch TV news a lot.  TV news has the burden of limited time; the news given on a half-hour broadcast (oops!  22 minutes excluding commercials) is about as much as you can read in a newspaper in five minutes or less.  If your "the media" is TV; is it any wonder that you miss a lot of in-depth coverage?

How to vote intelligently

We went to a League of Women Voters meeting, supposedly to watch "Patriocracy", a movie about the divisiveness in this country.  For some reason, the movie never made it to the meeting place.  Instead we had an impromptu discussion about the subject.

One of the complaints voiced is how many news organizations don't separate fact from fiction, treating every pronouncement from politicians as fact, especially on TV.

I gave these four suggestions for voting intelligently:

Don't watch TV
Don't answer the phone
Read lots of newspapers
Show up and vote

If you don't follow my advice on the first three points, do me, yourself, and your country a favor by proudly acting on the fourth point.

The Velcro controversy - equal opportunity satire

Jim Heffernan is at his best when he satirizes public figures (or himself or other journalists).  He really takes on many politicians of different persuasions in "Disaster feared as worldwide Velcro failure spreads".

Be sure to read Jim's latest blog entry sitting down in a chair with arms.  Neither Jim nor I can take responsibility for anyone falling out of his or her chair laughing.

Who has the right "experience"?

John McCain keeps hammering away that he has foreign policy experience and that Barack Obama is inexperienced. McCain claims that Obama is willing to meet Iranian President Ahmadinejad "without preconditions". Obama responds that "Ahmadinejad is not the most important man in Iran and may not even be the right person to talk to."
- Duluth News Tribune, 2008-10-03

Notice Obama's use of "may not". I'd rather have someone who is ready to adapt his foreign policy to others' reactions than someone who sings "Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran."

Unbalanced "balanced" reporting

We were only able to watch the Biden-Palin debate for about a half-hour. After about the third time that Gov. Palin refused to answer a question and went on to something else, we turned the TV off and went to do other things.

I was amazed later in the evening to find hardly any mention of this in online commentary. I was still amazed when the Duluth News Tribune gave both fairly good marks for their performance. It was only when I got to the very end of an article about UMD students watching the debate did I find this:

“She keeps changing the subject, cutting off the issue, like she’s trying to hide something or doesn’t have an answer,’’ [Josh] Clarke said. “She just shows a lack of experience, kind of naive.’’
- Duluth News Tribune, 2008-10-03

Fortunately, similar comments are appearing today. And surprise, more of it is coming from so-called conservative or centrist commentators. So-called liberals seem to be afraid of any criticism of Palin; that would make them part of the "biased media."

I'm sorry, but if most people understand there is a problem, and one candidate states there is no problem and another states we must address this problem with thoughtfulness; shouldn't we be more critical of the first?