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Unfit for Publication: How USA Today Got Everything Wrong
USA Today splashed across its June 18, 2014, front page the breathless headline, "Unfit for Flight" to dramatize the deadly enterprise of flying general aviation aircraft (small airplanes). There is only one problem: Nearly every inference about aviation in the article is wrong. (www.huffingtonpost.com) Altro...
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I read the original article, the one that was posted here. I don't normally read USA Today. I didn't have a chance to go back and check the authors claims, but having been in aviation for over 30 years, my gut instinct was that the article was written more for sensationalism rather than responsible journalism. USA Today has become the US equivalent of the UKs Daily Mail, or Germany's Bild.
There are three kinds of lies: Lies, damned lies, and statistics.
I get the article has problems. But simply comparing raw number of deaths to other things is just as misleading and incomplete an analysis as the original article they are blasting.
There are roughly 250,000 GA aircraft and over 12,000,000 recreational boats in the US. Comparing raw deaths is just as misleading as the original article. Is it really worth pointing out that an activity with 5 times the number of "participants" has only double the number of fatalities?
There are roughly 250,000 GA aircraft and over 12,000,000 recreational boats in the US. Comparing raw deaths is just as misleading as the original article. Is it really worth pointing out that an activity with 5 times the number of "participants" has only double the number of fatalities?
Well, the other thing to consider also is that a lot of all this has been around a pretty good while=deaths and accidents all over and every mode; reporting has just gotten really instantaneous and widespread now. Lots of times, back in the day, the numbers might be gathered somewhere and then go off into never never land. Now everybody has a computer to catch and report them, and while some things have been going on for years, it is just now being reported because it's a raw number and there.
I do agree with you somewhat. It should be a percentage, not a number. Just like movies setting records for gross receipts when the tickets cost 100 times more than 60 years ago. Numbers can be misleading and interpreted any way you want.
Why cant the media,,all elements of the media, be more knowledgeable of a subject before they report on it? We see this kind of sensationalism on TV and in print all the time...In Texas, traffic deaths are posted on highway signs,,almost 1400 so far this year,,and other then GMs problems, very little is said about highway safety..come on, lets see some common sense in reporting...
