Facts and Fiction

We hear a lot about "fake news" these days.

How does it occur?

It usually results from a journalist with an agenda who wants the story to reflect their world view.

That world view often developed in their mind because they heard a narrative repeated over and over again until it is assumed to be a fact.

Despite being a journalist, they don't take the time to research and actually report the facts. They never stop to think that the narrative might be wrong. They end up reporting fiction as if it were fact.

Let's take a look at three such narratives that are common that we often hear in the reporting of the mainstream media. Let's then look at some recent facts.

Trump supporters are deplorable conservative extremists who are outside the mainstream in their political views.

Here is a scatterplot chart by Lee Gutman of the Democracy Fund's Voter Study Group that looked at Trump and Clinton voters on a two dimensional axis that asked their views on an economic liberalism/conservative index (views on social safety net, trade, inequality and active government) and a social/identity liberalism/conservative politics index (views on moral issues plus views on African Americans, immigrants and Muslims).

Voters with political views in the middle on both the economic and social/identity dimensions would put them right in the middle of the scatterplot. A voter in the lower left quadrant would have extreme liberal views. A voter in the upper right quadrant would have extreme conservative views.

Credit: Democracy Fund Voter Study Group

Which voters in 2016 held more extreme overall political views? Trump or Clinton?

There are almost no Trump voters clustered in the upper far right hand quadrant. Contrast that with the Clinton voters in which the mass of voters is all deeply within the lower left quadrant.

Which voters are more extreme in their views?

Trump's position on immigration is racist, xenophobic, extreme and he is alienating Hispanic voters in record numbers that will destroy the future of the Republican party.

How does that "reporting" square with the latest polling data of likely 2020 general election voters by McLaughlin & Associates that finds President Trump's approval rating with Hispanics at 50%! That is higher than his overall approval rating in this poll which was 49%.

I thought it was also interesting that Trump had a higher approval rating with voters in the East than the Midwest in this poll. That also goes against conventional wisdom.

Notice that Trump's approval with African Americans is 16%. In a vacuum, that number is less than impressive. However, when you compare it to the fact that McCain only received 4% of this vote in 2008 and Romney got 6% in 2012, it looks a lot better. That 16% approval is also double the percentage that Trump got from Blacks in 2016.

Less you want to discount the McLaughlin poll, Rasmussen's daily track poll of April 9, 2019 shows that Trump's approval is 53%. On the same date in Barack Obama's first term, Obama was at 46%.

Climate change is causing untold disasters around the world and contributing to widespread human suffering in the process.

It is a great headline but it is not supported by the facts.

HumanProgress.org reports that climate-related deaths have decreased by 96% while the population has increased by 300% over the last 100 years.

I am not suggesting that climate catastrophes have decreased by 96%. We still have cold, heat, drought, floods, hurricanes, tornados as we always have had. The facts also suggest that in many respects the weather is less severe that it has been many times in the past.

Reduced deaths have largely resulted due to human advancements. We have better weather forecasting and warning systems and construction methods have improved. However, the biggest factor has undoubtedly been the development of fossil fuel machines to power heating and cooling systems to allow humans to be highly resilient and secure no matter the ebbs and flows of the climate. That is very much an inconvenient truth in this day and age.

Let's conclude with one other chart that I came across recently that explains a lot. Data scientist Kalev Leetaru used a technique called "sentiment mining" to analyze every article published by The New York Times from 1945 and 2005 and archival broadcasts from 130 countries around the world between 1979 and 2010. He did it to determine how positive or negative the overall news coverage was over these periods.

Here are the results.

Generally, over time, news coverage has gotten more and more negative. However, looked at objectively, the world has gotten better and better over that period on any number of measurements.

Credit: Kalev Leetaru

Steven Pinker, a cognitive scientist at Harvard, summarizes it pretty well within the broader context by comparing news coverage to actual facts in the real world.

During 7 decades in which our lives got longer, richer, safer, healthier, better educated, more peaceful, & more stimulating, news coverage got increasingly negative. 

What I find most ironic in all of this is that due to the internet and the ease at which facts and fiction can be more easily researched and discerned today, we find ourselves where we are.

The unanswered question is why?

I guess that is why cognitive scientists like Pinker exist.

They try to explain the unexplainable. Why do our brains often have so much difficulty ignoring facts that conflict with our emotions and feelings? In particular, why does cognitive denial and dissonance seem to be more evident with journalists than any other group today?