{"id":8978,"date":"2019-11-07T23:09:44","date_gmt":"2019-11-07T23:09:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/socialpanic.org\/?p=8978"},"modified":"2019-11-07T23:09:44","modified_gmt":"2019-11-07T23:09:44","slug":"journalism-1-in-4-americans-defaulted-on-their-student-loans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/2019\/11\/07\/journalism-1-in-4-americans-defaulted-on-their-student-loans\/","title":{"rendered":"Journalism: &#8220;1 in 4 Americans defaulted on their student loans&#8221; is misleading"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The first sentence to this pseudo news report shows the headline is misleading:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>A quarter of borrowers who take out student loans<\/strong> end up defaulting within five years, while many of the people who pause or defer payments due to hardships end up paying more than they originally would&#8217;ve owed, according to a\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.pewtrusts.org\/en\/research-and-analysis\/reports\/2019\/11\/student-loan-system-presents-repayment-challenges\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">study<\/a>\u00a0from the Pew Charitable Trusts.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;.<\/p>\n<p>Of 400,000 residents in the state <strong>who took out a student loan<\/strong> between 2<strong>007 and 2011<\/strong>, roughly 24% defaulted within five years. Nationwide, 26% of borrowers defaulted, Pew said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Source: <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/news\/1-in-4-americans-defaulted-on-their-student-loans-in-five-years\/\">1 in 4 Americans defaulted on their student loans, study finds &#8211; CBS News<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<p>This wording is highly misleading &#8211; it uses the propaganda method of &#8220;anchoring&#8221; to anchor your thinking (as I did) to the &#8220;1 in 4 Americans&#8221; have defaulted on student loans.<\/p>\n<p>As you can see from their own reporting, 1 in 4 of those &#8220;who took out a student loan&#8221; &#8211; <em>during the economic collapse and depression<\/em> &#8211; defaulted.<\/p>\n<p>The actual number is about 4% of the population defaulted on a student loan <em>during the economic collapse and depression<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>As of 2019, <a href=\"https:\/\/studentloanhero.com\/student-loan-debt-statistics\/\">about 45 million<\/a> of the U.S.&#8217;s 320 million people have taken on a student loan. That is 14% of the population. The typical student graduates with about $29,800 in debt which they pay back in monthly payments <a href=\"https:\/\/www.manhattan-institute.org\/issues2020-millennials-arent-drowning-in-student-debt\">as small as about $200<\/a>.\u00a0 From the actual Pew study, 1 in 4 <em>of that group<\/em> &#8211; or just under 4% defaulted on a loan.<\/p>\n<p>The CBS News headline &#8220;1 in 4 Americans defaulted on their student loans&#8221; leaves out the critical context that this occurred during the worst economic collapse since The Great Depression.<\/p>\n<p>This is likely intentional propaganda messaging from CBS News. Their goal is for you to support the wiping out of student loan debt (which is technically transferring other&#8217;s debts to you). Viewers and readers will leave with the yellow journalism exaggerated headline that &#8220;1 in 4&#8221; defaulted on their loans, and will not know that is not true.<\/p>\n<p><em>I have another example of this coming up, where the headline from a major U.S. news outlet is 100% false<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The claim that &#8220;1 in 4 Americans defaulted on their student loans&#8221; is a misleading headline from CBS News. The actual number is less than 1 in 20 Americans defaulted &#8211; and this was narrowly during the period of The Great Recession, the worst economic collapse since The Great Depression. They have worded the headline to use the method of &#8220;anchoring&#8221; &#8211; when we see this, we immediately think &#8220;1 in 4 Americans&#8221; have defaulted, which is not true. This appears to be propaganda in support of wiping out student debts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,29,30,39,40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8978","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lies","category-media","category-media-propaganda","category-fake-news","category-fictional-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8978","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8978"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8978\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}