Posted on 01/20/2007 12:31:38 PM PST by GMMAC
New York Times Gets Another Story Very Wrong
- This Time it’s about Marriage
Accused of “journalistic malpractice” for skewing stats
to incorrectly show most women not marrying
By Peter Smith
NEW YORK, January 19, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The New York Times has once again published another 'hit piece' on the institution of marriage, alleging that for “the first time more American women are living without a husband than with one”. However, US census data for 2005 shows that the January 16th front-page story in the New York Times is just another disturbing showcase of the Times’ tolerance for “journalistic malpractice”.
“For what experts say is probably the first time,” writes Sam Roberts on the Times front page, “more American women are living without a husband than with one, according to a New York Times analysis of census results.”
“In 2005, 51 percent of women said they were living without a spouse, up from 35 percent in 1950 and 49 percent in 2000,” writes Roberts. He adds that now married couples make up a minority of all American households and “the trend could ultimately shape social and workplace policies, including the ways government and employers distribute benefits.”
The plain truth is that Roberts’ findings are at variance with US census reports for 2005, which demonstrate a far different picture from the profiles selected by Roberts of single women “delighting in their new found freedom.”
According to the 2005 report “Marital Status of the Population by Sex and Age”, the United States is not yet a culture that has discarded the institution of marriage, where 60.4% of men and 56.9% of women over 18 years old are married.
However, Roberts creates his own analysis by using the Census Bureau’s “Living Arrangements of Persons 15 Years Old and Over by Selected Characteristics”, by including in his 51% figure of women living without a spouse: unmarried teenage and college girls still living with their parents, women whose husbands work out of town, are institutionalized, or are separated from husbands serving in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Perhaps most disturbing is how blatantly Roberts’ claims are at variance with US census bureau statistics. Among marriageable women over 18 years old, 56.9% of women are married, with 53% having a spouse present, 1.4% with a spouse absent, 9.9% widowed, and 11.5% divorced. Yet, 67.3% of women 30-34, and 70.5% of women are married, a far cry from the profiles of women offered by the Times of women finding fulfillment outside marriage.
“It’s one of a series of articles the New York Times has run…playing games with numbers in a misleading and dishonest way, each one of them having the same point: marriage is over, marriage is finished, nobody wants to get married anymore, people are happier not getting married,” conservative talk show host Medved told his radio audience, accusing the Times of committing “journalistic malpractice”
“Obviously 97% of women between the ages of 15 and 19 are never married!” Medved fumed. “What does it tell you when he’s including girls living home with their parents as single women and then uses that to create this lie that the majority of women are unmarried?”
Dr. Scott Stanley, co-director of the Center for Marital and Family Studies at the University of Denver, said that today’s median marrying age for woman is 26, a fact that radically skew marriage statistics when comparing the data to other eras where men and women married at younger ages. Far from women abandoning marriage, he said “the number of people who want to be married and have it work out well is still extraordinarily high.”
The census data also reflects the reality that women are delaying marriage after age 25. As a percentage, 95.2% of women 18-19 years old, and 74.6% of women 20-24 years old have never married. However, more than half of women have married between 25-29 (41.3% never married), a percentage which continues to increase in the other age groups.
Dr. Bill Maier, psychologist in residence at Focus on the Family described the article as “another brazen attempt by The New York Times to advance an ultra-liberal social agenda," adding that the profiles seemed more interested in disparaging marriage and discouraging young women from even considering it than reporting the fact that married women have better physical and emotional health than unmarried ones.
"Marriage as an institution is suffering in our country," he added. "We should do everything we can to promote healthy, stable marital relationships, because those relationships remain the bedrock of our society."
The New York Times is quickly gaining greater notoriety as a source of journalistic inaccuracy rather than a trusted news source; more interested in pushing politics than “all the news that’s fit to print.” Doubts as to its accuracy will further be heightened as the paper intends to let lapse the position of public editor, since ombudsman Byron Calame admitted that the New York Times magazine had been caught seriously misrepresenting an abortion case in El Salvador by LifeSiteNews.com.
To express concerns to the New York Times:
Arthur Sulzberger Jr., Chairman & Publisher: publisher@nytimes.com
Scott H. Heekin-Canedy, President, General Manager: president@nytimes.com
Sam Robert’s NYT article on Marriage: 51% of Women Are Now Living Without Spouse
U.S. Census Bureau: The 2007 Statistical Abstract: Marital Status and Living Arrangements
See LifeSiteNews.com's expose of the Times’ tolerance for inventive reporting:
New York Times Caught in Abortion-Promoting Whopper - Infanticide Portrayed as Abortion
See LifeSiteNews' Jan. 2, 2007 report:
New York Times Ombudsman Admits Paper Was Caught in Misrepresentation by LifeSiteNews.com
(c) Copyright: LifeSiteNews.com is a production of Interim Publishing. Permission to republish is granted (with limitation*) but acknowledgement of source is *REQUIRED* (use LifeSiteNews.com).
Can you cite a specific source for this quote? Sure hope you can. I want this one for my "Voice of Tryanny" file.
{ 8^D
I was fooled once again, because I failed to apply dsc's first law: All liberals lie all the time.
This should be very clear to all Freepers: The NYTpromotes the homosexual agenda whenever it can. This story was to disrespect Christian marriage. Their plan is to replace Christian marriage with queer-unions. They are well on their way to success. Keep your powder dry!
Medved did a great job on cleaning their clock on this one. Wish he could lay off a bit on the Corsi thing.
Roberts even put the Old Grey Lady in the Not Married column.
The NY Times wants to undermine and diminish conventional marriage because their signature issue is gay "marriage." If they can't have it for their swishy constituency, they'll sour-grape it for everybody.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
To me, the most amazing thing about Conquest is this: after the fall of the USSR and the opening of the archives, he was rare among historians in revising his work. And he was even rarer in finding that he didn't need much revision at all: Even under the restricted-information climate of the seventies and eighties, he wrote deadly accurate work. (See, "The Great Terror: A Reassessment" -- which, when the publishers quibbled on the title, he suggested could be called "I told you so, you [expletive deleted] fools.")
This, in an era where most "historians" were content to fluff the Soviet dictator du jour.
Sure, it's a digression on this thread, but it's nice to see that being the only Conquest admirer for miles around doesn't mean I'm the only Conquest admirer! I'd say I'm in damned good company.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
"jouranlistic malpractice" -- great slogan.
Democrats, liberals, and Big Media in general have a huge anti-marriage agenda. The more people they can convince to follow this lifestyle, the more votes they have, and the more customers they have for their newspapers and television news shows. Period. These groups LOVE the single, unmarried woman, either gay or straight. Single mothers are heroes to this crowd. Ever spent much time in an Episcopal Church (particularly in a blue state or any large metropolitan area), in a college faculty lounge, or a Democratic political rally? If you’re a long-time married, and particularly married to #1, chances are, you’re going to feel like an outsider!
And here we have the clearest evidence that Liberals/Democrats WANTS to create Fascist State!!
And to think how ironically the mantra of the Leftist is always "Bush Lies".
We know who is actually lying.
Has the Times replied back to this story and their presentation of the facts?
Quite uncanny. I spent a great deal of time in the company of Czech exiles. Many of them were literary folk, and their main outlet was based in your country; "Sixty-Eight Publishing" for obvious reasons.
My folks recently bought me some books from Prague, and behold one was published by "68," now re-established in Free Czechia.
I'm broadly familiar with Bandera and with the abortive US/UK attempts to assist him and other partisans in the late forties and fifties. I believe there is a story or two in the unclas version of Studies in Intelligence (the CIA house historical magazine, the unclas version is available online). Watch the UK's National Archives, too; although they are much slower about declassifying stuff than we are. The oldest classified document in the US Archives is less than 100 years old, and it's the single WWI era document still held back on our side.
On Afghanistan, I have to say I have a lot of admiration for the way the Canadians have conducted themselves. It's easy to forget that Canada is a small country in terms of its population and a young one in terms of independence; it may not have the clout it once did, but it still punches above its weight.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
Did Maureen Dowd write the Times article? I know she's been having so much trouble getting a man lately that she wrote an anti-male book entitled "Are Men Necessary?"
but it is not dropping fast enough.
There are too many "investors" willing to prop up the NYT regardless of profit and too many willing to advertise in the NYT due to its niche readership.
The only way to end the NYT is to end the ability of people to advertise in it. Perhaps stock holders should ask their corporations why they are wasting money in the NYT?
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