Misuse of Data for Political Gain

July 12, 2003 Address to the 21st Annual Meeting of Doctors for Disaster Preparedness Noon to 1:00

Address by Craig J. Cantoni Capstone Consulting Group – ccan2@aol.com – www.craigcantoni.com

Well, with all of the doctors in the audience, we certainly don’t have to worry if someone begins choking on my remarks.

And if anyone becomes seriously ill, I’m sure that one of you would be happy to write a prescription for some free medicine, courtesy of George Bush. Of course, your professional expertise will also be free, since Ted Kennedy and Hillary Clinton say that you should work for nothing for society.

Thank you, George, Ted and Hillary, for being “compassionate” with other people’s livelihood and money.

The title of my talk is “The Misuse of Data for Political Gain.” There are so many examples of data being misused for political gain that I could stand up here and do nothing for the next 40 minutes but recite one example after another on a wide range of subjects, especially on such hot-button subjects as the environment, education, terrorism, the Iraq war, the economy, taxes, health care reform, poverty and race. The list of examples is endless, because politics has degenerated into what I call dueling policy wonks.

Pick a subject, and you can find some policy wonk from some special-interest group or consumer or environmental advocacy organization citing statistics that supposedly prove the merits of a pet cause and tar the opposition as being against fairness, justice, equality, motherhood and apple pie. We’ll talk about apple pie in a moment.

Like a magician pulling rabbits out of a hat, the policy wonks can produce scientists, economists and other assorted experts at a moment’s notice to vouch for what they say, no matter how ridiculous and unscientific it is. And opposing wonks can produce different scientists, economists, and other assorted experts to make a different case, no matter how ridiculous and unscientific it is.

To me, the important question is not why groups engage in the misuse of data. They obviously engage in it out of self-interest, whether for money, power, prestige, ideology or some cause. Of course, the more that the regulatory state controls the economy and has its busybody nose in every nook and cranny of our lives, the more that special-interest groups will petition the government out of self-interest.

The important question is why they get by with misusing data for political gain and what can be done to stop them.

The first reason is the profound change that has taken place in the media. (I’m going to be grammatically incorrect and use “media” as a singular word instead of a plural word today, to mean the Big Biased Blob that encompasses establishment newspapers and TV networks.)

Journalism has been transformed from a watchdog role to an advocacy role. Instead of trying to achieve balanced reporting, journalists now frame issues according to the prevailing worldview taught in journalism school and reinforced by the in-bred culture of the journalism guild. Although journalists deny it, they view the world through leftist lenses. Consequently, instead of asking who, what, why, where, when and how, journalists from the establishment media now parrot press releases from advocacy groups that share their view of the world.

The second reason is the profound change that has taken place in public schools. Public education used to be decentralized; thus, it reflected local community mores and values. Now it is increasingly centralized at the state and federal levels, where it is hijacked by teacher unions, entrenched education bureaucrats and a small number of text book publishers – most of whom have the same worldview as journalists.

Furthermore, it stands to reason that someone who works for the government and is a member of a union is going to think differently than someone who doesn’t. It’s naïve to believe that unionized government teachers leave their view of the world on the kitchen counter when they leave for work and don’t bring it with them into the classroom. And it’s naive to think that they have the same understanding of economics and free markets as someone who competes everyday in the private sector.

Higher education isn’t much better. I guest lecture periodically to senior business classes at Arizona State University, where I find students to be profoundly ignorant of economics and the philosophical, moral and intellectual foundations of our constitutional republic and capitalism. I would characterize the students as anti-capitalist – and these are business majors, not journalism or English majors! One time, in speaking about health care reform, I explained how the government killed a free market in medical insurance 60 years ago and why nationalized health care would be a disaster. Only two students nodded there heads in agreement. One was an exchange student from Red China. The other was an exchange student from Canada.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. What I’m going to do for my remaining time is give examples of how the Big Biased Blob of the media and the Big Biased Blob of government schools play into the hands of those who misuse data for political gain. Along the way, I’ll share my experiences as a columnist, a self-appointed media watchdog, the former head of a large environmental group in the New York City area, and an activist in medical insurance reform and public education reform. My hope is that you can glean some points from my remarks about how you can be more effective in furthering the commendable mission of Doctors for Disaster Preparedness.

Mark Twain said, “There are three kinds of lies – lies, damned lies and statistics.” Actually, there is a fourth kind of lie: half-truths. The media abounds with half-truths.

Half-truths are more pernicious than lies, in my opinion, because it is more difficult to discredit the teller of a half-truth than the teller of a lie.

An example of a half-truth was a fairly recent story in big-city newspapers about auto deaths being at an all-time high. Deaths are indeed at an all-time high. That half of the story was true. But the other half of the story was not told: that the number of miles driven is also at an all-time high, and that deaths as a percentage of miles driven have decreased dramatically over the last 10 years.

Now, if you are a consumer safety group that requires continued bad news to keep donations flowing into your coffers, which half of the story will you tell? Similarly, if you are a reporter who believes in global warming and who wants to replace the auto with mass transit, which half the story will you tell? And if you are a reader who knows little about statistics and who does not have a high level of critical thinking skills, thanks to government schools, will you even suspect that there is more to the story than the half-truth that was printed in the newspaper?

Another example is the controversy over duct tape. On February 7, 2003, the government issued an online book titled, Are You Ready? It gave advice on how to prepare for a chemical or biological attack. One of the many suggestions was to assemble a supply kit that included, among other items, a roll of duct tape and plastic sheets. As expected, late night talk-show hosts had fun with that one.

Derision was also expected from those who have an ax to grind with George Bush, but I couldn’t figure out how they would make a political issue out of duct tape. Well, they found a way. A leftist web site, www.thenation.com, out of Madison, Wisconsin, said that duct tape was included in the list of items because the biggest duct tape manufacturer in the nation had given $100,000 to the Bush campaign.

And on February, 25, 2003, Denver Post columnist Penelope Purdy wrote an article titled, “Use brains, not duct tape.” She said that plastic sheeting and duct tape will not stop gamma rays. That’s true. But she turned it into a half-truth by failing to say that the government had never said that plastic sheeting and duct tape would stop gamma rays. The government said that plastic sheeting and duct tape could help to “block out air that may contain hazardous chemical or biological agents.”

Admittedly, since I’m not a scientist, I do not know the value of duct tape and plastic sheeting in blocking out chemical or biological agents. But if they have some value, we would not know it from Penelope Purdy and Madison leftists. Apparently, they would rather keep the facts from us then agree with the Bush administration. In other words, they would engage in half-truths for political gain, even if it endangered the country.

Let me go back in time to an example of how half-truths and the misuse of data can created a public panic. It’s a story of apples. Yes, I said “apples.”

How many of you remember the Alar (pronounced A-lar) scare? Please raise your hand if you remember it.

Good memory, considering that the Alar scare took place 14 years ago. The scare was triggered by a segment on the CBS news magazine show 60 Minutes. The segment was about a report by the Natural Resources Defense Council. The report was titled, “Intolerable Risk: Pesticides in Our Children’s Food.” The report said that a dangerous carcinogen, the chemical Alar, was being sprayed on apples – apples that children eat.

Just the title of the report alone was enough to make the 60 Minutes’ audience of 40 million swoon with fear. A masterpiece of fear-mongering, the title contained the emotionally-charged words “intolerable risk,” “pesticides,” and “children.” Upon hearing those words, what responsible parent needed to hear anything else? What responsible mother would serve pesticides to her infant?

But Alar wasn’t a pesticide. It was a synthetic chemical that affected the growth rate of apples in order to produce a more uniform ripening before being picked. CBS correspondent Ed Bradley called it “the most potent cancer-causing agent in our food supply.” The segment included a visual of an apple with a skull and crossbones superimposed on it and footage of a pediatric cancer ward.

Emboldened by the 60 Minutes publicity, the Natural Resources Defense Council went into high gear. Its public relations firm convinced other news outlets to carry the story, and the Nobel Prize-winning scientist Meryl Streep appeared on talk shows about the dangers of Alar and even testified in Congress to other great scientific minds.

A public panic ensued. Apples and apple juice were removed from school cafeterias and supermarket shelves. Apple growers suffered financial ruin. The manufacturer of Alar, Uniroyal Chemical Company, was forced to stop selling the chemical.

Later, after the panic had subsided and reason started to replace emotions, 60 Minutes was accused of airing a hit piece. It came to light that a person would have to eat 27,000 lbs. of apples a day to get the equivalent dosage of Alar that was fed to lab rats. Washington State apple growers brought a $250-million class-action suit against CBS. The suit was dismissed by an appeals court, which subsequently had its decision upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court. States passed laws making it a hate crime or some such nonsense to disparage produce. Now when my kid says he hates broccoli, I’m afraid that the police are going to break down the door and arrest him.

Before finishing the story, let me ask this distinguished audience of doctors a question: How many of you believe that Alar is a dangerous carcinogen?

Well, the EPA disagrees with those of you who do not think it is a dangerous carcinogen. It banned the chemical in late 1989. So, in spite of its lies and half-truths, the Natural Resource Defense Council not only won but has flourished in the years since. And in spite of its yellow journalism, 60 Minutes continues to be a highly-rated show. If you screwed up in your medical practice as badly as CBS, you’d be sued for malpractice and have your Medicare business shut down by the feds.

Does that put an end to the Alar story? Hardly. If you conduct Internet research on the subject, you’ll see that policy wonks from the left and the right continued to duel over the issue long after it had disappeared from the news. One article is particularly interesting. It was published in the Columbia Journalism Review in 1996 and written by the former managing editor of the American Journalism Review. That makes the author a high-ranking member of the journalism guild. He defends 60 Minutes and the Natural Resources Council, and criticizes conservatives and the apple industry for their backlash. He even goes so far as to quote a November 1990 New York Times story, saying that “the industry overall has suffered little fallout.” We know, of course, that if something is published in the New York Times, it must be true.

Apparently, the Columbia Journalism Review and the rest of the journalism guild have learned nothing from the Alar incident. Journalists failed 14 years ago to put the risks associated with Alar into perspective – to say, for example, that rats ate the human equivalent of 27,000 lbs. of apples a day. Today, journalists continue to exclude risk assessments and cost-benefit numbers in their coverage of hot-button issues.

An example is arsenic in drinking water, a hot-button issue a couple of years ago when debates were raging about higher federal standards for community water supplies. George Bush eventually approved the news standards, but only after being demonized by Democrats and country-club Republican mommies in the press for resisting the standards and thus subjecting kids to poisoned water. I remember being frustrated at the time over the absence of information in big-city dailies about how much life expectancy would be increased by the standards and at what cost. The only newspaper that I could find with part of the information was the Wall Street Journal. As I recall, the Journal said that the standards would cost $30 million per extended life.

Granted, that figure would not have mattered to the cost-is-no-object crowd or to those who think that Elvis is still alive and was seen at the local Wal-Mart buying underwear. Nor would it have mattered to Democrats and consumer advocacy groups that wanted to skewer Bush. But it should have mattered to journalists who are supposedly taught balance in journalism school. That it didn’t matter to them speaks volumes about the state of journalism today.

Arsenic and Alar – hmm, sounds like the title of a play – show how emotions triumph over reason. I learned that lesson as the former president of a large environmental group in the New York City area. I had reporters accepting whatever I said at face value. Why? Because we were seen as a group that only had one interest, the public interest, while our corporate enemies were seen as having a profit motive, which, in the worldview of journalists and teachers, is as bad as child abuse.

My group and I were frequently covered by the New York Times and by New Jersey’s largest paper, the Newark Star Ledger. We were also covered by the Christian Science Monitor, USA Today, ABC network news and numerous smaller newspapers and media outlets. The largest Gannett paper in New Jersey even honored me as Volunteer of the Year on a Sunday front page. And I still have a front-page picture from the Star Ledger of me standing between Senators Frank Lautenberg and Bill Bradley as they and the rest of the New Jersey congressional delegation were preparing to testify with me before a congressional committee on Capitol Hill.

That experience taught me that how you frame something is more important than facts and statistics. And the best way of framing something is with a human-interest angle. For example, we framed one story with the help of an elementary school principal, who said that our opponents were hurting kids. We framed another with the help of a black community activist, who said that our opponents were shortchanging blacks in Newark. And we framed almost everything we did as a David-Goliath battle – as a group of average folks against the Goliaths of industry and government.

We had facts and statistics to back up what we were saying, but the framing came first. In addition, we had a pocketful of sound-bites to use when necessary.

I’m going to pause here and take a few moments to summarize the points that I’ve attempted to make so far:

1. that news stories are full of half-truths; 2. that risk assessments, cost-benefit numbers and other statistics are woefully lacking in news stories; 3. that groups like yours can play a valuable role in telling the other half of the story; and 4. that facts and statistics are more effective when framed with human-interest stories and anecdotes, preferably about children and minorities.

Incidentally, there is an outstanding article on risk assessment by Bernard Cohen in the current issue of the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons. It is chock-full of statistics that can be framed with human interest stories.

One other suggestion: In dealing with the establishment media, always refer to your group as a non-partisan citizen advocacy group. Do not ever refer to yourself as a free-market or conservative group. Let me explain why.

At a recent meeting of the Society of Professional Journalists, a friend of mine asked a panel of journalists why journalists use the label “conservative” to describe conservative and free market groups more than they use the label “liberal” to describe liberal and socialistic groups. Their answer was that conservative groups tend to label themselves as “conservative,” but liberal groups tend to identify themselves as nonpartisan or not label themselves at all. In other words, journalists punish conservatives for being honest and reward liberals for being dishonest.

Which brings to the question of whether there is a liberal bias in the media. It’s a rhetorical question.

Of course there is a liberal bias in the media – or I should say, in the establishment media – especially on issues of race, taxes, economics, mass transit and public education spending. The media is pretty good, however, at covering traffic accidents.

Let’s look at an example about race. On January 1, 2000, ABC News reported that although terrorism didn’t occur as expected with the start of the new millennium, there was still reason to fear terrorist threats from – get this – white supremacists, doomsday cults, Christian fundamentalists and anarchists. Yes indeed, you really have to worry about Christian fundamentalists flying airplanes into buildings.

Curiously, there was no mention of Islamic fundamentalists. Was that because ABC didn’t know about such a threat 19 months before 9/11, or was it because white fundamentalists were fair game at the time but Moslems were not? I don’t know, but I do know that when it comes to issues of race, coverage is whitewashed by the brush of political correctness.

One of the most egregious examples took place at the newspaper I write for, the Arizona Republic, which is a Gannett newspaper with a circulation of 500,000. Years ago, it had hired a Hispanic reporter to cover Hispanic issues. As someone who used to live in the barrio, I noticed that her stories had a bad odor to them and told her editors so. They ignored me, just as Jayson Blair’s critics were ignored at the New York Times. She was fired sometime later for fabricating a story about a racist who hated Hispanics but who later discovered that he was of Hispanic ancestry.

Reporting on social issues is almost as bad as the reporting on race at the Republic and other big-city newspapers. For example, the lead reporter on poverty, welfare and other social issues at the Republic frequently quotes the leftist Children’s Action Alliance but virtually never quotes conservative family advocacy groups like the Family Research Council.

I once debated an executive of the Children’s Action Alliance at a public forum. When asked what she would do to improve the state’s economy, she replied, “I’d unionize everyone and raise the minimum wage to $12 an hour.” Yet this economic illiterate is treated seriously by the Republic because her organization has the word “children” in its name.

My favorite example of media bias is mass transit; specifically, light rail. It’s my favorite because it shows how a bias on one public policy issue leads to a lack of coverage on another public policy issue.

Reporters, editors and editorial boards are overwhelmingly in favor of mass transit and light rail, and overwhelmingly against the auto, although, paradoxically, much of a newspaper’s ad revenue comes from auto sales. I’ll explain how I know that the bias is real in a moment.

Big-city newspapers are also against suburban sprawl and for downtown development and higher population densities. I believe that it is more than a coincidence that there are few stories in the establishment press about how mass transit and higher population densities might increase the risk of terrorist attacks and the death toll from a biological, chemical or nuclear device.

Perhaps there isn’t a greater risk. Perhaps I’m being paranoid. Perhaps the risk is the same in Scottsdale as in Manhattan. Perhaps I’m just as vulnerable in my car as I would be on a crowded train or bus. But doesn’t the possibility also exist that newspapers, many of which are located downtown, are not about to assign reporters to write about the risk after advocating the expenditure of billions of dollars on downtown development and mass transit? And doesn’t the possibility exist that the federal government, after expropriating hundreds of billions of dollars from the Highway Trust Fund for mass transit, is not about to reverse itself? Moreover, doesn’t the possibility exist that politicians who have made lifelong friends by doling out billions of dollars of transit pork to contractors and transit unions, are not about to turn off the spigot?

I ask these questions because I know that newspapers are already not telling the truth about mass transit and light rail. For example, they do not tell the public that light rail does virtually nothing to reduce traffic and pollution. Nor do they tell the public that light rail is so uneconomic that the only way to attract riders is to give them a subsidy of about $8 per ride. And for sure, they do not tell the public that someone who takes light rail to work over an entire career gets about $100,000 in taxpayer subsidies.

Sadly, because the public has not learned economics in government schools, especially the branch of economics called public choice economics, they don’t even know enough to ask about the level of subsidization or to realize how subsidies result in the misallocation of capital and political shenanigans.

Why don’t reporters level with readers about light rail? The answer is not ignorance of the facts. I and others have been sending the facts for years to reporters, editors, managing editors and editorial boards. But the facts are ignored. I actually had a St. Louis Post-Dispatch transportation reporter say that the studies don’t matter because he likes light rail.

I believe that newspapers don’t give the facts to the public about light rail and other public policy issues because they think they know what is best for the public and want to dictate public policy. If they gave the public all of the facts needed to make an informed decision, reporters and editors would lose their influence over public policy. They would only be reporters of the news instead of shapers of the news.

The mind-set has become so ingrained that some journalists are surprised by the idea of giving facts to the public and letting them decide what to do. For example, the December 2001 issue of the Atlantic Monthly had an article titled, “Countering the smallpox threat.” The author wrote that while he was pondering the problems of smallpox, he, quote, “came across a news article from October of 2000, in which a biologist named Paul W. Ewald, of Amherst College, suggested something so obvious that no one else seemed to have considered it. He proposed making the smallpox vaccine available to the public, the way many other vaccines are today. Individuals could then decide, after being apprised of the risks and with medical advice, whether or not to get themselves and their children inoculated.” Close quote.

Wow! Imagine that! In a free society you could actually give the public information and let them decide what is in their best interest. Gosh, no telling where that might lead. You could tell citizens the truth about Medicare and let them decide if they wanted to participate in the program. The same with Social Security. Think about where that would lead. We’d be a free society instead of a half-socialist one.

Before turning to my next subject, let me make a concluding remark about the media. First, a group like yours is sorely needed in revealing half-truths for what they are and in telling the missing side of the story. Even if you did nothing but respond to half-truths as you hear them, you’re doing a valuable service. Unfortunately, however, once a half-truth is spread by the establishment media, it is very difficult to change public opinion.

To be even more effective, then, you have to be on the offensive rather than the defensive. You have to get the whole truth in front of the public before those with a political agenda disseminate their half-truths. Fortunately, as doctors, you have a lot of credibility with the public. And, thankfully, you have a lot of ways to disseminate the truth outside of the establishment media, especially via the Internet.

My last subject is public education. I conclude with it because I believe that data is misused for political gain more in the public education arena than any other arena, and that the establishment media is at its most biased when it comes to public education. Education reporters are more like education cheerleaders than professional journalists when it comes to public education.

I also believe that it is unhealthy in a free society for the government to have a monopoly on K-12 classroom thought. Now the monopolists want to extend the monopoly to pre-kindergarten children. Some day, newborns will be turned over to the state in the delivery room.

The public has been fed teacher union propaganda by the media for so long that most Americans believe that teachers are underpaid and that public education is under-funded – neither of which is true. Class sizes have shrunk by 40 percent over the last 25 years, education spending has doubled in inflation-adjusted dollars, and academic achievement has remained stagnant. The truth is, teachers are being paid more for less work. Such a deal. Meanwhile, those of you with Medicare patients are being paid less for more work – so much less that prices don’t cover your costs.

If you ask highly-educated residents of Arizona where the state ranks in education spending, the vast majority would say near the bottom. The fact is, the state ranks near the middle. Why do otherwise intelligent people believe something that isn’t true? Because the falsehood is constantly repeated in the Arizona Republic and other local media. And why is it constantly repeated in the newspaper? Because education reporters rely on bogus data from the education establishment.

The newspaper even creates its own bogus data. It conducted a survey last year of readers, asking them to design the “perfect school” by deciding what they wanted in terms of facilities, class sizes, teacher training and other variables. The survey had a fundamental flaw: It didn’t say what the various options would cost. In other words, it was a cost-is-no-object exercise in which economic tradeoffs were not considered. Yet the paper splashed the results of the survey on the front page as if the survey was a meaningful exercise and as if the results should be acted upon by state legislators. Shameful!

And once again, the public fell for the propaganda because the concept of economic tradeoffs is a foreign concept, thanks to government schools.

If you share my views about public education, what should you do? Since reforming public education is not the mission of Doctors for Disaster Preparedness, you have to decide what you want to do as private citizens. My recommendation is to give financial support to organizations that are fighting for choice in education, including such organizations as the local Goldwater Institute, the Institute for Justice and the Friedman Foundation.

Before I open this up to questions, comments and criticisms, let me conclude with the following points:

1. As long as the government keeps growing into a leviathan, the misuse of data by special-interest groups for political gain will also keep growing. 2. As long as the Big Biased Blob of the media continues to tell half-truths, and as long as the Big Biased Blob of government schools continues to have a monopoly on K-12 thought, special-interest groups will continue to get by with misusing data for political gain. 3. As long as special-interest groups get by with misusing data for political gain,

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2 posted on 07/14/2003 6:01:55 AM PDT by Support Free Republic (Your support keeps Free Republic going strong!)

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