Here's an interesting chart:
Posted on 09/06/2019 8:42:12 AM PDT by Mr.Unique
Background How do people die?
How do people think we die?
And is there a difference?
Well, it turns out there's a fascinating study conducted by Paul Slovic and Barbara Combs where they looked at how often different types of deaths were mentioned in the news. They then compared the frequency of news coverage with the actual frequency of people who died for each cause.
The results are what one might cynically expect:
"Although all diseases claim almost 1,000 times as many lives as do homicides, there were about three times as many articles about homicides than about all diseases. Furthermore, homicide articles tended to be more than twice as long as articles reporting deaths from diseases and accidents."
Since 1979, when the original Combs and Slovic study was conducted, there have been several more empirical analyses which have found largely similar results. (Notably, here and here )
For our final capstone project for the fantastic Bradley Voytek's COGS 108 course at UCSD, we thought it would be interesting for us to have our own go at examining potential disparities between actual deaths and their corresponding media attention.
For anyone curious about any of the steps throughout this project, the original data and code we used to do all this analysis is available here on GitHub .
Here's an interesting chart:
Two things:
1. If the press suddenly started breathlessly reporting every traffic fatality, we would think cars are inherently dangerous and should be eliminated.
2. I believe it was Louis L’Amoure that said that in the old west, more men died of shake bite than being shot.
The most interesting thing is that the google search evidence for what people are really concerned about is a bit off compared to actual death rates, but it’s much closer to reality than the NYT or the Guardian.
"Although all diseases claim almost 1,000 times as many lives as do homicides, there were about three times as many articles about homicides than about all diseases. Furthermore, homicide articles tended to be more than twice as long as articles reporting deaths from diseases and accidents."
Thanks Mr.Unique.
Other than Pravda on the Hudson and the Guardian having near duplicate reporting themes, I don’t get the point.
When it comes to death and “reporting” on deaths in the news, of course homicide - which is less common than cancer - is reported in the news more often. Is there an identifiable person who is a culprit in a cancer death?? What would be the purpose of reporting every cancer death the way homicides are reported?
The two most glaring discrepancies are the rates for heart disease and the leads it bleeds categories (terrorism homicide and maybe suicide).
I don’t get the point.
More of an observation that "man bites dog" gets the coverage.
Then coverage drives policy.
A way of summarizing the takeaway from that is that casualties inflicted by weapons -suicide (1.8%), homicide (0.9%), and terrorism (<0.01%) - together accounted for less than 2.8% of deaths in 2016. But journalism’s coverage of suicide (>10%), homicide (>20%), and terrorism (over ⅓) in 2016 accounted for over two thirds of journalism’s coverage of deaths in America in that year.Deaths caused by weapons (broadly defined) easily reflect negatively on society and can easily be thought of as reasons for government to “do something.”
This I see as vindication of my point that journalism is cynical towards society and naive towards government. I therefore bookmark.
Now they are going NUTS over 5 vape deaths.
“Nuts” towards society - not towards government.
Very interesting. Thanks for posting. BUMP!
Heart Disease 30.2 % < 3%
Cancer 29.5% <14%
Road, Falls, Accidents 7.6% < 3%
Lower Respiratory Disease 7.4% < 3.5%
Alzheimer’s Disease 5.6% <1%
Stroke 4.9% 5%
Diabetes 3.8% < 2.5%
Drug Overdose 2.8% < 1%
Kidney Disease 2.7% < 1%
Pneumonia & Flu 2.5% < 1%
Suicide 1.8% >10.6%
Homicide 0.9% >22%
Terrorism <0.01% >33%
| Actual | ||
| Cause of Death | Prevalence | Reportage |
| Heart Disease | 30.2 % | < 3% |
| Cancer | 29.5% | < 14% |
| Road, Falls, Accidents | 7.6% | < 3% |
| Lower Respiratory Disease | 7.4% | < 3.5% |
| Alzheimer’s Disease | 5.6% | < 1% |
| Stroke | 4.9% | 5% |
| Diabetes | 3.8% | < 2.5% |
| Drug Overdose | 2.8% | < 1% |
| Kidney Disease | 2.7% | < 1% |
| Suicide | 1.8% | >10.6% |
| Homicide | 0.9% | >22% |
| Terrorism | < 0.01% | >33% |
| Actual | ||
| Cause of Death | Prevalence | Reportage |
| Heart Disease | 30.2 % | < 3% |
| Cancer | 29.5% | < 14% |
| Road, Falls, Accidents | 7.6% | < 3% |
| Lower Respiratory Disease | 7.4% | < 3.5% |
| Alzheimer’s Disease | 5.6% | < 1% |
| Stroke | 4.9% | 5% |
| Diabetes | 3.8% | < 2.5% |
| Drug Overdose | 2.8% | < 1% |
| Kidney Disease | 2.7% | < 1% |
| Pneumonia & Flu | 2.5% | < 1% |
| Suicide | 1.8% | >10.6% |
| Homicide | 0.9% | >22% |
| Terrorism | < 0.01% | >33% |
Nice table!
I likeey. You can see how ugly it came out in #14; I don’t understand why it is so hard to make the columns line up using <pre> and <tt>. But, it is what it is, and your “table” method is much easier/better.
I’ll be more likely to employ this table when making points about the media the cynicism inherent in commercial general circulation journalism in future because the table isn’t ugly now.
You’re welcome. Feel free to pm me with HTML questions. I’m not an expert by any means but I’ll give it my best shot.
I’m good for now, but I won’t promise not to take you up on that later. :-)
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