Wednesday, March 23, 2005

Cyber-Davids and MSM-Goliaths

It's great to find reasons to temporarily throttle back feelings of despair over the gradual extinction of independent-thinking, aggressive-reporting mainstream journalism of the sort that used to at least on occasion grind the gears of the political machinery. And, well, help to keep our more-or-less-unique democratic experiment working. Wasn't there a time when we had press conferences and community gatherings that weren't pre-staged, by-invitation-only, and featured presidents replying to actual impromptu questions from real citizens? They tell me that events like this were pretty routine in the past even without the benefit of remote receiver-prompters that can be (almost) hidden under a suit coat.

Happily, just today I encountered two apparent cases of major no-longer-fourth-estate media having to backpedal after the more independent, courageous, and I would argue patriotic resources of cyberspace weighed in.

CNN was first to eat crow after pulling an amazingly unrefined boner straight out of the classic highly entertaining text "How to Lie With Statistics" right out where anyone could see it. Except most who did probably took it at face value, showing just why this sort of chicanery is so easy (and tempting), although in this case possibly a case of sheer incompetence rather than design. And showing why we need a multitude of skeptics paying attention when it comes to the mainstream press. Preferably outspoken eloquent activist skeptics. Make 'em dance!

Alas I've not yet overcome some sort of internecine jousting between recommended picture-posting add-on and primary blog software here and hence am unable to share pertinent graphs that really make the subterfuge obvious. You'll have to settle for text of this post from MediaMatters, who broke the story, but click link to get your graphic fix:

In presenting the results of a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll, CNN.com used a visually distorted graph that falsely conveyed the impression that Democrats far outnumber Republicans and Independents in thinking the Florida state court was right to order Terri Schiavo's feeding tube removed. In fact, a majority of all three groups agrees with the court's decision, and the gap between Democrats on one hand and Republicans and Independents on the other is within the poll's margin of error.

According to the poll, conducted March 18-20, when asked if they "agree[d] with the court's decision to have the feeding tube removed," 62 percent of Democratic respondents agreed, compared to 54 percent of Republicans, and 54 percent of Independents. But these results were displayed along a very narrow scale of 10 percentage points, and thus appeared to show a large gap between Democrats and Republicans/Independents. [graph]

Laid out in this manner, the graph suggests that the gap between the two groups is overwhelming, rather than only 8 percentage points, within the poll's margin of error of +/- 7 percentage points. Also, this presentation obscures the poll's finding that majorities of all the groups sampled approved of the removal of Schiavo's feeding tube.

[CNN updated its graphic after the posting of this item.]

The Consortiumnews website was one of several a few weeks back taking exception to the stampede of folks wanting in full sycophantic rapture to credit the Bush administration for everything possibly good (even in the shortest of terms) that might ever take place in the Middle East forever and ever amen:

. . . on March 1, 2005, the Times editorial was panting along in the middle of the press herd, sure that disparate events – the Iraqi election, anti-Syrian demonstrations in Lebanon and tentative progress in the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations – showed that the Bush administration's neoconservative theories about reshaping the Middle East were right.

“The Bush administration is entitled to claim a healthy share of the credit for many of these advances,” the Times editorial said.

Our view was different. We wrote that “there is an alternative explanation for each of these Middle East developments that is rooted in local circumstances. In Iraq, the Shiites and the Kurds turned out in large numbers for the Jan. 30 election – not to endorse George W. Bush’s invasion – but because the election let them consolidate control of the country at the expense of their longtime tormentors, Iraq’s formerly dominant Sunni minority. ...

“Similarly, recent cracks in the Palestinian-Israeli stalemate relate far more to last year’s death of longtime Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat – and to aging Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s quest for a positive legacy – than to the U.S. invasion of Iraq. ... In Lebanon, popular resistance to Syrian troops has been growing for years, especially since Israel withdrew its troops from southern Lebanon in 2000. The assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri was the catalyst for the recent public demands for a complete Syrian withdrawal.” [See Consortiumnews.com's “Neocon Amorality,” March 3, 2005.]

Two weeks after that Consortiumnews.com article and a second one making a similar point, the New York Times had come around.


Scuze me while I kiss these guys!