Women account for 55% of newsroom jobs, while men account for 45%. Since 2 out of 3 journalism grads are now women, this will over time shift further towards news positions staffed primarily by women, the opposite of 40 years ago.
Every year, an activist/lobbying group issues a report saying people earning minimum wage cannot afford to rent an apartment anywhere in the country. They play a sleight-of-hand trick by obfuscating (and not revealing) that they are saying such individuals cannot rent an apartment priced at the 40th percentile. Stated another way, this report finds – every year – that people earning minimum wage can not rent apartments priced in the top 60 percent of the market – yet obviously, lower earners likely rent at the bottom of the market, not the top. Every year, the media morons run the same story, never understanding what this report says.
“Gas guzzler” is emotive wording, intended and used to elicit a response from the reader. It is not neutral language – it is propaganda messaging. There is, surprisingly, no official definition of what “gas guzzler” even means.
For every reporter, there are 6.2 “public affairs”/public relations staff working behind the scenes to manufacture the news reports to fit their desires.
Attribution studies attempt to connect individual weather events to climate change. But the ability to do that is so limited that the results are not meaningful. Repeated exaggeration and misreporting leads to skepticism – and serves no useful purpose.
American suburban life seems to regress to a mean of segregation. A 2011 analysis using Census Bureau data found that a “typical white” American lives in a neighborhood that’s 75 percent white. Source: A Tale Of Two Suburbs | FiveThirtyEight A real shocker – the “typical white American lives in a neighborhood that’s 75 percent white”. This is then interpreted by writer Clare Malone to mean that most white Americans live in segregated neighborhoods – in a country that is…
Numerous media reports, all sourced to social media posts, say Florida has food shortages due to Gov. Desantis’ policies. But they are showing photos and videos of empty store shelves that occurred in the past after hurricanes, or one video showed empty refrigerated goods section at Walmart. That actually happened – but it was due to a malfunctioning refrigeration system so food was temporarily removed while the unit was undergoing repairs. “Professional” media sourcing to anonymous items on social media tends to end badly.
From Wikipedia: “A weasel word, or anonymous authority, is an informal term for words and phrases aimed at creating an impression that something specific and meaningful has been said, when in fact only a vague or ambiguous claim has been communicated.” Media commonly uses weasel words in headlines to create scary scenarios out of relatively low confidence predictions.
Some one posts a TikTok video claiming “Baby boomers” never had to deal with inflation and had it easy finding jobs. She is factually and logically wrong, but the media turns this into a viral story, without noting the Tiktoker was wrong. The TikToker demonstrated she knows nothing of history without saying she knows nothing of history. It’s not a good look!
Most journalism in the U.S. today is “yellow journalism” that focuses on scandal, celebrity, “crisis”, the oppressed and fear and the prophets of doom – via scary headlines, and sample bias to cover stories that fit the yellow journalism narratives. Today, the most over used word in media is “crisis” – as you’ll see in this post, today, everything is a “crisis”.