Fact Check: The Number Of Mass Shootings

When you hear or read alarming media reports of the rising number of mass shootings going on in the United States, please keep in mind something that Mark Twain once said: "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics."

The media is widely reporting, and I think Obama cites the number, that there have been 355 cases of mass shootings in the United States in 2015. Well, for the purpose of urging people to support gun control, statistics relating to mass shootings now includes such incidents as a BB gun attack by two children in which no one was seriously injured.

See: Fact Check: 355 Mass Shootings So Far in 2015?

 

Here is a follow up on the same story and, oddly enough, a leftist publication, Mother Jones, is referenced as the source, stating that the actual number of mass shootings in the U.S. in 2015 is 4, not 355 as the mainstream media and our president assert.

 

That occurs a lot. When the U.S. government reports on employment rates, they rarely mention that, a few years ago, they changed the definition of employment. Whereas, someone used to have to work in a 40-hour per week job in order to be considered employed full-time, that is no longer the case. Also, we keep hearing about the number of jobs that have been created each year, yet we rarely hear about the number of jobs that were lost during that same year. People assume that the statistic they are hearing refers to the total gain in jobs, but it doesn't.

In personal experience, when I became the EMS Director in Los Fresnos, I would read statistics in the paper from one ambulance company or another stating their average response time to emergencies, and would feel that my company had to compete with that. Then I saw the breakdown one day, and learned that this particular company had disregarded the slowest 10% of calls, as well as the fastest 10% of calls from the calculations. Then, since I had access to his calculations, I found that, on another month, he did not do this, and I realized that he was basing the formula used according to the results. Whichever would give him the best numbers was what he would go with. Yet, any reader of the newspaper article would assume that the number was obtained by taking the total number of response minutes and dividing it by the total number of calls.

Companies and governments do this all the time. There was a time when newspapers and other news media would do their own investigations and realize that the formulas used are just as important as the results, in that they help their readers to interpret the results. These days, perhaps due to reduced staff and the desire to publish as quickly as possible, they just accept whatever numbers they are given. There is very little in the way of investigative reporting anymore. What they consider objective reporting is when they interview both a Republican and a Democrat, ignoring the fact that both are lying to them. Yet, if you pay attention, you will realize that the interviewer isn't even listening. In most cases, someone could confess to killing Kennedy and the interviewer would simply go on to the next pre-prepared question.

I'll post it if I come across it again, but there was a recent interview when the interviewee (for the purpose of demonstrating this) intentionally gave nonsensical answers to questions, and the well-known news person, who was doing the on-air interview, never realized that the interviewee was talking about Edward Scissorhands rather than the political question she was asking about. Rather, she just went on to her next prepared question.

Our news media is not only biased, but it is also very lazy.