I’m getting sick of the lying and misrepresentations in the media. We all heard so much about fake news during the last Presidential campaign from both Republicans and Democrats that you could be forgiven for thinking that it’s not a real thing, that it’s just people upset because they aren’t hearing their opinion in the media.
While that often seems to be exactly where accusations of fake news are coming from, the fact of the matter is that there really are “news” stories out there that are simply misleading and, sometimes, outright lie.
A recent example of a misleading story is a CNN story about airguns. The story tells of an unfortunate situation in which a kid lost an eye due to playing with an airgun and, then, makes it sound like airgun injuries are epidemic in the U.S. But, according to Tom Knighton, this just isn’t so. Knighton writes,
In other words, [when cnn reported an almost 170% increase in injuries due to airguns,] while there’s been an increase, it’s still only a fairly small percentage of all accidents [as it was an increase from 1.61 per 100,000 children in 1990 to 4.34 per 100,000 children in 2012]. Obviously, if it’s your child, it’s a huge issue, but it’s a non-issue for the vast majority of cases.
Read that again: CNN reported an almost 170% increase in airgun injuries in 22 years. What they don’t tell you is that the rate of these injuries is still 0.00434% of children. In other words, it’s a really, really small number still.
Also, Knighton references Chris Heuss who wrote:
Fun fact: The Journal study reports that 89 percent of these injuries occur with no adult present. So what we have here isn’t a gun problem. It’s a failure to parent.
So, maybe CNN should be reporting that the problem isn’t that kids are playing with airguns but that kids aren’t being supervised by their parents.
Kids being safer with adults around? Imagine that.
This CNN news “story” is simply more proof positive that the mainstream news media isn’t interested in the truth or in doing the right thing, but they are only interested in scaring people and pushing an anti-gun agenda. This CNN story was, in essence, fake news, and fake news needs to stop.
When you report a false news or fake news you undermine your own honour. About 3 clildren are hurt by airguns. That’s because of a parenting issue. Like no supervision of children with airguns. Or allowing children access to a gun, without a parent around. You mafe it sound like a gun issue. But it is a parenting issue, bad parenting at best.
You are so right. It is like a good accountant. You can take numbers and depending what your agenda is, can make them to be true but very misleading. Then again, there was the story that the President was going to die from his health. Just passed a physical with flying colors. If this ain’t a LIE I don;t know what is……
Kinda like “figures don’t lie, but liars figure”
Going from one incident to two is a 100% increase, which is or could be sad, but is it something that shakes the foundations of the nation? One would hardly think so.
I am always suspicious when anyone uses percentages rather than the actual numbers.
So did you correct them since you had the facts?
When I first started reading this, a movie flashed in my memory of a young boy being told he couldn’t have a BB gun for Christmas because he would shoot his eye out. A very old movie but the wording was just too much of a coincidence. CNN and all, should be ashamed of themselves of sensationalism. As Phil Trimmer said, a good accountant or numbers person can present the numbers in many ways to make them look better or worse than is true. Skewing the meaning of what is being presented. I, myself, always thought the straight truth was always better and got reprimanded by my boss because I wouldn’t skew the numbers. I see a lot of misrepresented headlines and I’m sick of it. Of course the media would say the truth doesn’t sell papers but who’s fault is that? Poor writing and not reporting on what the people are really interested in….. unbiased truth.
Careful… if you read it on CNN or MSNBC, check other sources before you decide to “forward” it on under your name! It may be just “politically” correct on that servers point of view!
This biased news media is making me physically ill; They are questioning pres Trumps physical.. They are questioning the Dr….Don’t you think if the Dr. found something wrong The president would be in John’s Hopkins double stat? Funny I didn’t hear a word from the left wing media when Hillary was falling all over the place and she was caught slurring her speech!
CNN and MSNBC still have an audience ?
Isn’t that Fnn, fake news network
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