This is one of the things I like about this new age of journalism: the ability of those outside the tent to provide context that might otherwise be missing.
“Armed Liberal” at Winds of Change has taken a NY Times report, added a little math and come to the conclusion The media does it again.
He cites part of the NY Times article:
Town by town across the country, headlines have been telling similar stories. Lakewood, Wash.: “Family Blames Iraq After Son Kills Wife.” Pierre, S.D.: “Soldier Charged With Murder Testifies About Postwar Stress.” Colorado Springs: “Iraq War Vets Suspected in Two Slayings, Crime Ring.”
Individually, these are stories of local crimes, gut-wrenching postscripts to the war for the military men, their victims and their communities. Taken together, they paint the patchwork picture of a quiet phenomenon, tracing a cross-country trail of death and heartbreak.
And then writes:
But as usual, I keep asking the simple question – well, what does it mean? How do these 121 murderers compare with the base rate of murderers in the population?
I’m not sure how accurate the math is, but Armed Liberal takes the number of murders by vets — 121 according to the Times — divides by the number of troops and comes up with a rough guess rate of 10/100,000 (murders per number of vets). And then:
Turning to the DoJ [Department of Justice] statistics, we see that the US offender rate for homicide in the 18 – 24 yo range is 26.5/100,000.For 25 – 34, it’s 13.5/100,000.
See the problem?
Damn, is it that hard for reporters and their editors to provide a little bit of context so we can make sense of the anecdotes? It’s not in Part 1 of the article. And I’ll bet it won’t be in the future articles, either.
Because it’s not part of the narrative of how our soldiers are either depraved or damaged.
It doesn’t end there. A number of readers (obviously none of them math-phobic) have added their own take on the rough figures.
All in all, this is a great example of the type of screening media now has to (and should) go through, whether you agree with the conclusion or not (I tend not to; the failure to provide context is, I think, a failure to do more reporting). But such criticism will only make a difference if those reporters and editors who are increasingly under scrutiny are paying attention and applying the lessons of the new scrutiny to their journalism.
TAGS: CRITICISM, JOURNALISM
