Bias in media is unavoidable.  Sloppiness is not.  When a journalist presents a statistic an alarm bell should always ring in the mind of the consumer.  Journalists have an Achilles heel in their constant urge to satisfy ego.  To be the one that exposed a particular “crisis” and be portrayed as intellectual and caring is the primary goal of entering the fourth estate.  From Journalism 101 on, budding “protectors” are told that without them the world would collapse into anarchy.  An almost “Jedi Knight” mindset is found throughout the field and this creates a need in the mind of a reporter to expose the “Dark Side” and save the unwashed, brainless peasants.  The diligent journalist will research a target in detail and connect particular events to show a wrong has been committed.  The sloppy journalist will use statistics.  Events are open to interpretation and can be debated.  Statistics, once reported, are as intellectually effective as “yeah huh!” in debate.  This is because reporters rarely investigate the details and context of the numbers, preferring to simply pick a number that fits the template of their story. 

            On July 18^th Steve Brown of FOX News did a report on John Edwards and poverty.  He reported to the flock that 24 million people were in poverty in 1968 when Robert Kennedy championed the cause of the poor.  He then enlightened us to the horrifying fact that the number of impoverished Americans has skyrocketed to 37 million now, making Edwards right to believe this is an issue to take him to the presidency.  The numbers are accurate on the face, but very misleading in their support of Brown’s story.  The population of the United States was 200,706,052 in 1968.  A calculator tells me that this puts the poverty rate at 11.95%.  The population of the United States now is 302,383,503.  My calculator, which I assure you all is a very reliable source, tells me that the current poverty rate is 12.2%.  Considering the re-defining of the poverty rate (always up), the ravages of the Great Society, illegal immigration and Jimmy Carter I would submit that these numbers are very encouraging. 

            Continuing to read from John Edwards PR pamphlet on television, Brown recites the oldie but goodie “women and minorities hardest hit” play with the fact that blacks and Hispanics are three times more likely to live in poverty.  But this demographic lives almost entirely in cities where the Great Society ensures a high poverty rate.  At least 10 million of the 37 million impoverished today are illegal aliens who arrived because they were in poverty in the first place, not because they are victims of the American system.  This is an outlier when examining poverty as a result of American capitalism and places my new adjusted rate at 8.93%.  Using the Global Warming Scientific Method I can sum up my research with a number I pulled out of my butt that says the poverty rate is actually 2%.  Let’s party!

            So another media fueled crises turns out to be a mirage.  Emotions and faulty connections of logic are weaved into the typical Socialist pretzel and crammed down our throats for a political agenda.  Imagine what journalists do to numbers they can control when reporting on polling?  The devil is in the details.