Oh, just kill yourself already.
Aug. 26th, 2005 05:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsThere are few things that bother me more than poor reporting. FOX radio yesterday had a blurb about how the northern spotted owl is still in decline despite it's having been listed on the endangered species list for over a decade. The FOX reporter went on about how much of the forest is set aside for the spotted owl but concluded the report with this sentence: "Scientist say that the method of counting owls is flawed." Neener-neener-neener, indeed.
So I looked into the study and discovered that the problem is not, as FOX smugly implied, overreporting. No, the problem is undercounting. Spotted Owls are counted by their calls, but an Eastern predatory owl has been an evolutionary pressure on on the spotted owl and has been decimating the noisy population, leaving only the quieter members of the species. If no owl is heard in a territorial region for a period of time, that forest is marked as owl-free and is suitable for logging.
Yeah, that's responsible journalism.
NPR did the same thing today while reporting on a study about obesity. Omaha and I have noticed that fatty, sugary, low-nutrition foods are high on the list of things they sell to the kids. And yes, the fact that all of the kids on the ads are thin and healthy implies that you can eat that crap and remain thin and healthy. One of the studies NPR cited said that fast food restaurants clustered around schools. Well, duh; that's where families live, and families are time-pressed, densely-packed populations that need food.
But what irritated me most was that NPR quoted a statement from McDonald's stating that "McDonald's restaurants are placed in commercial districts intended to serve everyone," but then said the Harvard study found that "Fast food restaurants are found in proximity to schools regardless of the density of commercial development in that neighborhood."
Both statements can be true. Both are legitimate statements with no implications for cupability, but NPR's juxtaposition of those two statements implied that McDonald's is lying about its intentions.
Speaking of spokesmen, today the London Zoo opened up a new exhibit: Homo sapiens. One "natural" exhibit shows human beings hanging out, sunning themselves, eating, singing, and other things human beings do. When asked why the London Zoo was doing this, aside from the publicity stunt, the spokesman for the London Zoo said, "We have set up this exhibit to highlight the spread of man as a plague species and to communicate the importance of man's place in the planet's ecosystem."
If anyone at the London Zoo really believes that he's part of a "plague species", why hasn't he done the planet a favor and killed himself?
You know why? Because it's never him, it's someone else. It's always some vague other "they" that the world would be better off without. The London Zoo, by pressing this argument, is encouraging tribal thought: someone else is to blame for the world's problems, let's identify that someone else and do something about it.
Today, my candidate for someone else: Journalists and spokespeople.
So I looked into the study and discovered that the problem is not, as FOX smugly implied, overreporting. No, the problem is undercounting. Spotted Owls are counted by their calls, but an Eastern predatory owl has been an evolutionary pressure on on the spotted owl and has been decimating the noisy population, leaving only the quieter members of the species. If no owl is heard in a territorial region for a period of time, that forest is marked as owl-free and is suitable for logging.
Yeah, that's responsible journalism.
NPR did the same thing today while reporting on a study about obesity. Omaha and I have noticed that fatty, sugary, low-nutrition foods are high on the list of things they sell to the kids. And yes, the fact that all of the kids on the ads are thin and healthy implies that you can eat that crap and remain thin and healthy. One of the studies NPR cited said that fast food restaurants clustered around schools. Well, duh; that's where families live, and families are time-pressed, densely-packed populations that need food.
But what irritated me most was that NPR quoted a statement from McDonald's stating that "McDonald's restaurants are placed in commercial districts intended to serve everyone," but then said the Harvard study found that "Fast food restaurants are found in proximity to schools regardless of the density of commercial development in that neighborhood."
Both statements can be true. Both are legitimate statements with no implications for cupability, but NPR's juxtaposition of those two statements implied that McDonald's is lying about its intentions.
Speaking of spokesmen, today the London Zoo opened up a new exhibit: Homo sapiens. One "natural" exhibit shows human beings hanging out, sunning themselves, eating, singing, and other things human beings do. When asked why the London Zoo was doing this, aside from the publicity stunt, the spokesman for the London Zoo said, "We have set up this exhibit to highlight the spread of man as a plague species and to communicate the importance of man's place in the planet's ecosystem."
If anyone at the London Zoo really believes that he's part of a "plague species", why hasn't he done the planet a favor and killed himself?
You know why? Because it's never him, it's someone else. It's always some vague other "they" that the world would be better off without. The London Zoo, by pressing this argument, is encouraging tribal thought: someone else is to blame for the world's problems, let's identify that someone else and do something about it.
Today, my candidate for someone else: Journalists and spokespeople.
no subject
Date: 2005-08-30 05:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-30 01:33 pm (UTC)I don't know what the original article was trying to say, but personally I'm not interested in calling humanity names or making moral pronouncements about what we're to blame for. Until quite recently, human beings had no idea that they could do permanent damage to the planet. We were just doing what all species do: try to survive and thrive.
But now that we do know what we're doing, do we want to continue to wipe out species right and left, until it's just us and our commensals, like rats, roaches, English sparrows, squirrels, pigeons, crabgrass, and ailanthus trees? Do we want our descendants to inherit such an impoverished world? Are we even sure that we'd be able to survive widespread destruction of ecosystems and their life-supporting services? Do we want to find out?
If you only have one of something, and you don't know exactly how it works, it's stupid to take it apart. Even stupider to throw away some of the pieces. We have no guarantee we'll be able to put it back together.