In the midst of an ineptly managed pandemic and ineptly managed civil unrest and economic fiasco people try to make sense of it by reading everything they can. Scrolling through post and news story after news story is called “doomscrolling” and it destroys your mental health. Sadly, much of the bull shit is not from random social media posts but from actual experts who spew nonsense.
Just about all of the numbers in this USA Today “news report” are wrong, and easily cross checked for the correct numbers. This. Is. Journalism. Where facts are strictly optional.
Washington Post publishes a pre-written news report about the BLS unemployment report – and the pre-written report was completely wrong. The WaPo later replaced the fictional reporting with an actual report.
A fake study cherry picks the start date of the pandemic to make a false claim that billionaires became far richer due to the pandemic. The actual purpose of the “study” is propaganda messaging using the methods of cherry picking, appeal to authority, and emotion. The errors made are large enough to be treated as lies, as well.
A new report with a poorly written headline has been interpreted as the cost of a Covid19 (coronavirus) test is $3,270. In fact, the CDC is not charging for their diagnostic tests. However, this meme has taken off on social media – that a test costs $3,270 – and this claim, in turn, is used for propaganda messaging on a variety of political and health topics.
Some politicians and popular memes assert that Scandinavian socialism is a model for the world. Except the Scandinavian governments themselves note they are not socialist countries. They are free market economies with high taxes supporting a large social safety net; they are not socialist countries. If the U.S. had the same tax structure as Denmark, then you would pay an income tax of 55.9% above $65,000/year in income.
The news headline says Oregon ranks high in natural disasters, which the text explains, is wildfires in the State.
This claim comes from a press release from a small, little known online Internet insurance sales web site. This type of press release is put out in hopes of garnering free publicity – and it certainly worked for them – in large part because the media, like all of us, is more likely to succumb to a fear-based scary headline.
However, if we practice factfulness and look at the long term trend in Oregon fires we see that a small rise at the right end of the chart has been translated into a crisis and a catastrophe. The chart above is the official chart from the Oregon government’s Fire Statistics page, and shows actual acreage burned and total fires burned in Oregon since 1911.
The slight increase at the extreme right edge is the basis for the scary headline. By leaving out all historical context and by focusing on large percentile increase in a tiny number at the right edge of the chart, the media creates unwarranted fear and hysteria in viewers.
This poster is a persuasive bit of propaganda. Most of it is not true. The parts that are true are that the Corn belt is a very productive region, and about 80 million acres (close to 100 million in the poster?) are growing corn. This item had been shared into my Facebook news feed.
Can you spot all the propaganda tricks in this chart? This chart has been running around social media for years. At best it is highly misleading. At worst, the data is not correct.
In 2019, California wildfires, by acreage, are running about one quarter the number as in 2018, and also well below the five year average.