Watching American elections is like seeing a freak show. I don't understand who are those people who can support any of the candidates or the media.
While the Huffington Post obviously sensationalizes things too, their top headline, "SEX ASSAULT SPREE / ACCUSATIONS PILE UP", is completely true: the accusations are piling up. I don't think you can draw an equivalence here.
> The number is true but the inference is false.
How are the numbers taken out of context? In your opinion, how would that headline read if the numbers weren't taken out of context? Or does the mere act of publishing the headlines (at all) make Breitbart guilty of taking the numbers out of context in your opinion? Honest question.
Also, it's not clear to me what you mean by "inference". Are you referring to the "-- But Paul Ryan Targets Trump" phrase? If so, then I would contend that "inference" is not the correct word. Instead, I would perhaps use the word "juxtaposition". Whether or not you agree to Breitbart's thinking, it seems to me that what they're trying to do is call attention to what they see as false priorities -- essentially, IIUC, they're saying "Paul Ryan is attacking the wrong person, because 70K women are targeted by criminal aliens and this is worse than anything Trump has done". You can agree to that or not, but it seems to me unfair to accuse them of bad logic.
"Criminal Aliens Arrested for Sex-Related Crimes 70,000 Times Between 1955 and 2010 — But Paul Ryan Targets Trump"
The original headline creates an emotional impact by implying certain things: that these 70,000 events are sexual assaults (not generic sex crimes like indecent exposure etc.) against women (implying a relationship with Trump's actions where none specifically exists) that happened recently (not during a 55-year period that ended six years ago). The headline with context doesn't have the same emotional impact because you can't make the same misleading inferences. Maybe these crimes are a problem, maybe they aren't, but either way this headline is a clear misrepresentation of the facts.
I have to say I agree with you on both counts. It would have been more accurate and neutral to write the headline as you suggest. (It would also have been longer and more boring.) Regarding your second point, a quick google search reveals that sex-related crimes encompass:
- Sexual Assault: Describes the catch-all crime that encompasses unwanted sexual touching of many kinds, with links to state penal code and federal law on related crimes. - Solicitation: It's illegal to entice someone else to commit a crime (such as prostitution). ... - Statutory Rape
I have no idea how the figures break down in these categories, so it's hard to the degree of unfairness being applied. If all of the 70K cases were rape, then Breitbart may actually be overly nice :) (Not saying it's likely!)
So thanks for that clarification. I would say, however, that this kind of headline is pretty typical for all news agencies. For example, during the Brexit "debate" in Britain, news outlets like BBC also quoted figures that were aggregated over a number of years to highlight the potential losses to the UK economy. Ditto the Daily Mail on the other side of the aisle. If this is the evidence that Breitbart is a shoddy news outlet, then I contend that the evidence is fairly weak.
They cite 70,000 sexual assaults from 1955-2010 and characterize it as a crisis. Yet, there are over 200,000 sexual assaults and rapes annually, and 80,000 sexual assaults in prisons alone annually. (https://www.rainn.org/statistics/scope-problem) If the 70,000 number was equally distributed, than 1,272 sexual assaults by criminal aliens would happen each year, which represents 0.006% of the total.
Is this a good thing? No. Is this some existential crisis where illegals are flooding over the border to rape american women? No.
Let's not dismiss what inaccuracy here can lead to: bigotry on false pretenses, violence against innocent immigrants, and blindly supporting wars against "the wrong kind of people."
The numbers lack context in that they don't specify a rate, merely a value. It makes it sound like 70K women are attacked each year by undocumented immigrants, when the reality is that the number is closer to 1.27K per year since 1955. Let's do some back of the napkin math:
There are about 11 million undocumented immigrants in the US, meaning that the rate of sexual assault victims per undocumented immigrant would be ~0.012%. Meanwhile, in 2006, 300,000 college women were raped.[1] With 300 million people (in 2006), that puts the rate for the general population at 0.1% of victims per person. That's nearly 10x the rate of the undocumented immigrant population, and that's only including college-aged rape victims, rather than sexual assault victims of all ages as the 70K number claims to be.
Meanwhile, we have Trump who has no fewer than 4 woman claiming he sexually assaulted him. Divide that over the 70 years of Trump's life, and at 0.057 women-per-year you have a 1-man rate of 5.7% -- 57x the rate of the general population. Seems like Paul Ryan is targeting the right person, and that Breitbart is using bad logic.
[1]: https://www.nsopw.gov/en-US/Education/FactsStatistics#victim...
Also, your numbers seem to demonstrate the exact dishonesty that you accuse Breitbart of doing.
The number cited for illegal aliens is the number of arrests.
The number you cite for the general population is a victimization survey which includes a lot of alleged rapes that were never reported to the police. (In fact, I can't even figure out if all of them meet the legal definition for rape.)
According to your report [1], 12% of rapes were reported to the police. If every single rape report results in an arrest (hint: they don't), that eliminates your 10x factor right there.
When reading Breitbart, you seem to draw incorrect inferences from cited statistics. And when digging up your own data, you also seem to draw incorrect inferences. Consider the possibility that the problem here isn't Breitbart.
(Note: I hate Trump. I favor open borders and think we should let Mexicans in even if they are more rapey than Americans. In fact I have nothing but positive feelings towards Mexicans - their food is tasty and their women are beautiful. I'm just pointing out bad reasoning.)
We are now in a post-fact era. Watching the current idiocy of the Trump speech happening right now shows it in full force. Any factual data people don't like now is a "conspiracy".
It seems both sides abuse these numbers to lead readers to draw certain conclusions. Yet criticism of the practice often is not evenly applied.
I think the idea stems from the way the Graun has opened up it's 'Comment is Free' section which has lead to quite a few low quality opinion pieces particularly 'SJW' esq ones.
The actual reporting from the Gruan is still good quality in my opinion, certainly head and shoulders above the DMs. And whilst the Graun has its left bias it, quite rightly, hasn't been kind to the current Labour party.
I'm in the U.S., and I constantly scan most of the major news source and commentary headlines.
It's a cesspool out there.
For a bit of history as I remember it, for what it's worth: in the 80s and 90s, I think, right-wing think tanks started providing a lot of research and background material. Of course these were slanted to right-wing views, but for the most part, unless you were really digging for stuff, it was academic. So if you had an argument about Gulf War I? You could, with effort, find some right-wing slanted stuff. But it was all alongside other academic material. It all balanced out. It was possible to consume a bit of bias and still make analysis work.
Then suddenly when the net started taking off, all of that research and such became much more easily available. If you were some right-wing guy looking to bolster point X, Google was your friend! You could find some nice charts and data.
Of course this was intolerable for the left, as it should be, so they started funding their own foundations and truth-providers.
This quickly became an escalating war. The titles got more and more scandalous and no matter what side you were on no matter the topic, you could find some studies and PhDs somewhere to back you up. It became a post-truth era.
Now it's all grown into vertical silos. Left-wing news sources publish left-wing commentators who repeat left-wing studies. Same thing happens on the right.
It's reached the point now where not only are the headlines and articles slanted trash, but it's problematic to sort it all out. In many cases you need to track an issue over time in both left and right-wing silos to arrive at something that works. The cognitive load for the average reader is simply too great. So instead they just stick inside their bubble and go through their lives not worrying about it.
I think this election a large percentage of people are finally figuring out how hosed up and colluding the systems of news and politics are. I'm not sure there will be improvement, but it's good to see a little daylight shining on things.
Here is the first publicly available mirror I came across.[1]
[0] Tentacles of Rage The Republican propaganda mill, a brief history
LEWIS H LAPHAM / Harpers Magazine v.309, n.1852, September 2004
[1] http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/2004/Republican-Propaganda1s...
http://www.snopes.com/2016/08/07/breitbart-duped-by-fake-new...
Loretta Lynch as a member of Bill Clinton's defense team:
http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/nov/10/...
Pretended a Cleveland Cavaliers crowd was a Trump crowd:
http://dailycaller.com/2016/08/04/breitbart-news-doesnt-mind...
Not to mention the whole ACORN thing in 2009:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACORN_2009_undercover_videos...
"One theory is that cars in Denmark are being burned by individuals from an angry underclass in a country where far-right groups have organized bitter protests against immigration, calling it a threat to the nation’s identity."
The article makes it clear the "angry underclass" is separate from the "far-right groups."
Why even mention the far-right at all, if nobody is suggesting they have something to do with these crimes?
The arab demographic has always been troublesome in Scandinavia.
So the far-right is implied to have something to do with these crimes, in the sense that they created an environment that triggers the crime.
The difference is how you spin the headlines and the facts. Both parties are guilty. Both parties feel only other side is doing it or say but look at the other website or magazine.
Huff is full of titles Trump is sexual predator without facts, just talks. Breitbart is full of stories Bill is rapist. So what's the difference?
It's all the same shit. It is just your bias talking.
We have, on record, him describing sexual assault. With his own words. On the other hand, some of the people who now are claiming Bill is a rapist once testified under oath that he did _not_ rape them. On top of the fact that there is zero evidence in favor of that statement.
That's the difference. And you would definitely know this if you weren't being disingenuous.
Yet other women have consistently claimed over decades that Clinton sexually assaulted them. And today women are coming forward accusing Trump of sexual assault.
There seems to be very little difference; both men have probably assaulted women in the past and abused their power to get away with it. I don't think arbitrarily slanting the narrative to defend one and condemn the other serves anybody. In fact, sweeping sexual assault under the rug when it doesn't serve your political agenda is a pretty horrible thing to do.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/17/us/politics/bill-hillary-c...
And sadly the Washington Times is the least biased source that I could find that even talked about it. That's why sites like Breitbart are able to be so successful. It's easy to build credibility by pointing out things like this, and then the rest of it can just be propaganda.
Benefit of the doubt needs to be earned. I mean, hopefully you are not taking supermarket-checkout tabloids at face value, right?
CNN may be terrible journalism that's full of softballs and "clickbait" but at the end of the day the things they report are true and when they're not they retract them. Can't say the same about Breitbart in the least.
Softballs and clickbait aren't any more true than lies.
It's basically like watching a Lifetime Movie. All the villains are straight white males. Except around Christmas, when all of sudden, they become caring selfless individuals.
just to realize that it's all the media, not just some of them.
Change takes time. If people really want it they'll have to work hard for it for at least the next eight years, regardless.
And no, it doesn't mean that Trump is any better or any worse. It's all bullshit.
It's not surprising that you and others people do, though. In the US, there are a lot of politicians who seem 'psycho/sociopathic' to many people. And, there are lots of CEOs like that, too. But, it doesn't prevent those people from leading or being effective.
Tell me, which is "propaganda."
Look mate I'm not interested in arguing who is more wrong. The fact is both sides have bias and talk about things that for whatever reason they find most important. And usually it bothers other side of the political spectrum so it's like a never ending loop from both sides.
They definitely don't do this. It seems like you have a significant misunderstanding of the literature being discussed.
>Look mate I'm not interested in arguing who is more wrong.
No, it's about who is wrong _more often_ and who reports fake stories _more often_. When the standard for one set of sources is consistently absurdly low then you can't just pretend all sources are equal. Again, it's a false equivalency.
No one is denying this. People are saying there's a significant difference between bias that influences the ways facts are portrayed, and bias that causes facts to be invented.
I'm decidedly not a fan of HuffPo, but this is a massive distortion. No-one is disputing that biological sex exists, and that's what science supports. The matter of gender, and various associated concepts such as gender roles and norms, is completely different - and there is plenty of research to support the idea that a lot of entrenched gender stereotypes are largely or purely a social construct.