Is It Misinformation?

Is it misinformation if it isn't intentional? If it is intentional is that disinformation? Can incompetence, say in reporting, be mere misinformation? 

Here's what we have.

There are a few things wrong with this. First, Dunwoody doesn't have a fire department, so those cannot be Dunwoody firefighters. They are (maybe?) DeKalb County firefighters, and thank god for that. Then, as it turns out, or so history tells us, 2977 people did not die in the twin towers on 1 Sept 2001. However 2977 did die in the terrorists' attack on the twin towers ten days after that date.

You have to wonder how much time must pass for events to become history, and historical facts that set the record straight when someone prevaricates. A week? A month? Years? Decades? Perhaps time is not the measure. Perhaps it is acceptance. Entry into the zeitgeist. Sometimes folks forget. Some never knew. Approximately 103 million people in America today were born after 9/11. It was never part of their existence. Over half of Americans were born after that last helicopter lifted off in Saigon. Is 9/11 headed to the same place as Vietnam? Some sepia stained story told by increasingly irrelevant old farts? Is it already there?

Unit Balance

This is from the Gray Lady, the pinnacle of journalism. Is it disinformation, obfuscation, or manipulation?

They have intentionally written this to be deceptively unclear. After all, it is THE Gray Lady, who knows all, and tells some. Look at how many folks worship at her feet. 

See, 1 in 31 presents the increase in small numbers, misleading in and of itself, and making a direct comparison with 2 to 4 per 10,000 as difficult as possible, in the hopes no one will do the conversion. That is by intent. This is where unit balance comes in, and as anyone who's used a slide rule can tell you, unit balances are indispensable. Yes. Those people still walk the earth. 

So what are the real numbers, the ones you can easily compare? 

Normalizing to cases per 10,000, we find that 1 in 31 is equivalent to 322.6 per 10,000. Wow! That is an increase, using 3 as the 1980 average, of over two orders of magnitude. Those slide rulers can tell you just how significant this really is. It is staggering. If you were part of an SRO crowd at Sanford Stadium, there were around 2900 "cases" there with you. 

This is an enormous, consistent growth rate over four and a half decades. Is that the lede the Lady wants buried? Consider this: the 1980 cases have doubled every 6-7 years. Your 401K should do so well, for that long, because if you had made a one-time investment of $10,000 in 1980 you would be a millionaire now. Why would someone not want you to know something that significant?

Why does the Gray Lady want to bury this in obfuscation? Do they have an agenda, perhaps a political agenda? Are they so steeped in antithisadministrationalism that they will ignore the traditional obligation of the Fourth Estate to the truth? Have they completely sold out to partisanship? 

If current political forces can do this to the Gray Lady, what hope is there for integrity in any corner of the Fourth Estate?

Mis&Dis Information. It''s Not Just For The Internet

A recent OpEd piece penned by Rodney Bryant came with the big, bold headline that included "we must restrict automatic weapons." To be fair to Mr. Bryant, he probably did not have any say about the headline and likely this is the AJC in full propaganda form since Bryant's piece is all about banning SEMI-automatic weapons. Of course that is pretty mainstream leftist fare trodding their well  worn path to a permission society, where they are the only ones entitled to grant permission. Nothing new to see here.

But early on Bryant goes full left wingnut advocating a total end to our form of democracy:

"It's important to recognize that the Constitution is a living document that must be interpreted in the light of changing societal circumstances."

He is saying nothing short of "your vote, or the votes of those you elect to represent you are worthless." In effect, he is calling for an expiration date on your vote, a date of the elitists choosing to be determined by them in their own good time. Ratify the ERA? Well, we'll stick with that for a while, but, ya know, society is just soooo circumstantial, so in a couple of decades we'll let black robes wash away your wishes. And why does he, and others on the left, take this approach? Because the legal, the constitutional approach requires that broad swaths of society adopt their world view, and few have. Following the constitutional process to an amendment is, by their estimation, likely to fail so they will impose their minority will on the majority by other means. The constitutionality of those means is of no concern because in their world they have already erased that document from history and for all time. They only thing that matters is what they think.