Slanted Media, Dangerous Statistics

I have known for a long time that the media was slanted. I learned in high school the power of an unbiased question on a survey or poll. Results of a poll or survey are not reliable if a question is slanted in any way. Slanted questions lead to slanted statistics (as if they couldn’t be skewed even based upon reliable questions).

Today I thought I would punch someone when I read this story. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26612538/

It wasn’t the subject matter that made me so mad; it was the way the story was written. The statistics used were so slanted in their portrayal it made me want to scream. Here, is one example:

“More than 5,000 U.S. teens die each year in car crashes. The rate of crashes, fatal and nonfatal, per mile driven for 16-year-old drivers is almost 10 times the rate for drivers ages 30 to 59, according to the National Highway Safety Administration. Many industrialized countries in Europe and elsewhere have a driving age of 17 or 18.”

It is like they have totally disregarded the age group that they are intending on shifting the driving age to. Perhaps looking at the statistics involved with those ages 17-18 would be something important to look at. Or drivers ages 19-25.

There is a poll at the end of this article that is such a leading question it makes me want to be sick. Here is what it says:

Do you think states should raise the age for getting a driver's license? * 8339 responses

Yes. Raising the driving age would help save lives. (65%)

No. Teens can be responsible as adults when driving. (35%)


If a poll is going to be given as a yes/no option the two answer choices have to be the opposite of each other. They cannot contain different explanations. The way this poll is written is obviously trying to steer people to vote yes. Because making the age higher would save lives, but that isn’t necessarily because teens are not as responsible as adults when they are driving. If everyone stopped driving today it would also save lives.

At the very end of MSNBC’s horribly written article is an attempt to seem unbiased. In this section they talk about the debate over the driving age, citing examples of how states have dealt with the danger of teen drivers without raising the age. The survey, however, is before this section in the article. Also, they still fail to discuss traffic accidents that are caused by drivers older than 16 that are not caused by alcohol. They say “Karen Sternheimer, a University of Southern California sociologist who studies accident statistics, cited federal data from 2007 showing that drivers ages 25 to 34, as well as those ages 45 to 64, were nearly twice as likely to be involved in alcohol-related fatalities as 16- to 20-year-old drivers.” But this is obvious. With the ability to go to bars comes an increase in drunk driving. This still does not even begin to address the issue of dangerous teen driving.

Perhaps MSNBC needs to reevaluate their writing technique