The press is allergic to math and it helps Trump immensely

[dsc]

Here is a clip from the MTP interview with Trump where he discusses autism.

https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/video/trump-says-rfk-jr-will-investigate-discredited-link-between-vaccines-and-autism-226492485522

He gives the following stat 25 years ago autism was seen in 1 out of 100,000 people and that now it is close to 1 in 100. It should be noted that both of those are utterly false. The real numbers are 1 in 150 and now 1 in 36. Did Welker bother to point out how wrong these stats were? Nope, of course not. You might be willing to say well maybe she didn't know (and to be fair I had to look up the numbers myself) but she brought up autism not Trump. And, it certainly doesn't take Carnac to see that very next thing out of his mouth would be a wildly false statistic about autism. She had days to prepare for the interview. She knew autism would come up because she was the one who brought it up. But like nearly all of the press, she pretends numbers don't matter and/or don't exist.

To be fair, I teach math for a living so I am probably significantly better with numbers than the typical person, but this isn't even real math. I didn't derive the numbers I recorded them from a website. It should have been the first thing a journalist would do, prepare for the interview. But even failing that, why didn't she do what I did when I saw the clip. I got online, and found the website and knew before the clip was finished just how wrong Trump was.

This happens constantly with Trump and much of the press. It shouldn't be that hard to actually prepare for interviews before one does them.

The fact is, to the extent people think autism increased by a factor of 1000 in 20 years, they would be right to wonder just what is happening. No amount of better diagnosis and redefinition would account for that level of increase. We would be right to wonder just what is going on. But that isn't the actual level of increase. It is a bit over 4 times not 1000 times. This is over two orders of magnitude off. And I guarantee you that more than a few people believed he was right since she didn't challenge him on the numbers at all. Again, this should be a simple proposition. It clearly isn't for the vast majority of journalists. These are college graduates. There is no earthly excuse for this level of ignorance. It would be as if I couldn't write a complete sentence. No one would hire me to teach no matter my level of math skills if that were the case. I am open to teaching these people some basic stats if that is what it would take.

[eppur_se_muova]

1. "It would as if I couldn't write a complete sentence." OOPS!

Your sentence no verb.

Happens to me increasingly ... gets worse every year ... go figure.

[dsc]

2. yeah just noticed

[Lonestarblue]

3. The media is allergic to numbers. Otherwise, people would have better information about the economy.

Comparisons of economic data from administration to administration are rarely made, and thus voters never get a picture of how Republicans are actually worse at managing the economy and add significantly more to the national debt with their tax cuts. We are reaching a level of debt where the ability to pay future debt is now being questioned, and some countries do not want to rely on the dollar as a global currency. And voters just elected a team promising to expand the debt astronomically.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

4. I'm often amazed at how many people are very proud of being bad at math.

[Karasu]

5. The entire country is, really. The media and the GOP have never hesitated to take advantage of that fact.

[Trenzalore]

6. The media is owned by the folks that sponsored him

That is all you need to know.

[republianmushroom]

7. You don't shoot your golden cow, no matter how sour the milk is,

if it is golden, as trump is to the media.