When Hillary Clinton was on her flight to Mexico City, she gave an interview to the press stating that 90% of guns used to commit crimes in Mexico originated from the U.S. In response, a journalist from Fox News wrote an article, (http://www.foxnews.com/politics/e...r-claimed/), indicating that what Hillary said was untrue and that the government was twisting facts. Rather than tackling the research headon, the journalist basically listed down the conclusion of the research that came to the 90% conclusion at the start of the article, followed by attacking the messenger, in this case it's the research, then added it's own facts with quotes from officers of various agencies, and finally justifying the new found facts by quoting the NRA. It's interesting to see journalists employing such tactics to sway public opinion. I've known Fox News to be very conservative throughout the Bush years and became very independant when reporting the 08 primaries and now back to their trueself. Sadly, many people especially gun loving citizens and conservatives will not see how Fox misinterpreted the information.
Now lets examined some of the cherry picking that Fox News did.
"In 2007-2008, according to ATF Special Agent William Newell, Mexico submitted 11,000 guns to the ATF for tracing. Close to 6,000 were successfully traced -- and of those, 90 percent -- 5,114 to be exact, according to testimony in Congress by William Hoover -- were found to have come from the U.S."
In the above statement, the reporter implied and used his own math to say that since almost 6,000 guns were untraceble, they must had came from outside the U.S. With this, he concluded that only 17% of guns come from the U.S. He continued justifying his numbers by saying the liberal media and the government is spreading false information. I suggest the reporter to take stats classes and understand sampling and the importance of RANDOM sampling.
"In a remarkable claim, Auturo Sarukhan, the Mexican ambassador to the U.S., said Mexico seizes 2,000 guns a day from the United States -- 730,000 a year."
Noticed in the quote above the reporter added the word 'remarkable'. Clearly, he is indicating that both governments are lying with the intend to take guns away from U.S. citizens. He too spewed out random numbers using mystical calculations to highlight the 2,000 guns seized a day as false. I actually would have thought that of all people, journalists should know that correlation is causation. Fox should send him back to school for some retraining. No wonder they ratings are dropping. People have become more educated and for the most part can see through their lies. Fox should really do a study to determine whether there is a correlation between education and watching Fox news.
Finally, let me just summarize how a typical research is being done.
1. RANDOMLY choose a set of guns. Notice the importance of the randomness. It is also impossible to send all guns that's why we randomly pick a selected no of guns and in this case is 11k. It's also important to be random so that the researcher's bias will not affect the outcome. The study here is how many of these guns originated from the US.
2.It's discovered that roughly 6k can be identified. As for the other 6 k, it's defective in one way or another that they are unidentifiable. It's unidentifiable. This means you cannot tell where it is from due to the samples being contaminated at the point of confiscation. This is important as the outcome could be 50% of guns seize by the mexico police during drug raids are damaged/destroyed while in combat/ melted halfway etc. This is where correlation is not causation. This is also the phase where the reporter/Fox purposely or uneducatedly added in their 'opinions' with 'facts' from other experts who were not doing this research. If these 6 k guns can be identified then they would have been included. Don't get confuse.
3. Out of the other roughly 6k that can be identified through serial numbers etc, 90% originated from the US and the remaining 10% from the rest of the world. There should not be any controversy here. Notice that Fox just made this outcome irrelevance where in fact it should be the most important of the findings.
4. Therefore the conclusion suggested that 90% of guns seized in Mexico through drug raids come from the U.S.
5. This is not liberal bias at all. last i know, Mexico is a conservative state and their ambassador said in the article that almost 2k guns originating from the US are confiscated daily.
2.It's discovered that roughly 6k can be identified. As for the other 6 k, it's defective in one way or another that they are unidentifiable. It's unidentifiable. This means you cannot tell where it is from due to the samples being contaminated at the point of confiscation. This is important as the outcome could be 50% of guns seize by the mexico police during drug raids are damaged/destroyed while in combat/ melted halfway etc. This is where correlation is not causation. This is also the phase where the reporter/Fox purposely or uneducatedly added in their 'opinions' with 'facts' from other experts who were not doing this research. If these 6 k guns can be identified then they would have been included. Don't get confuse.
3. Out of the other roughly 6k that can be identified through serial numbers etc, 90% originated from the US and the remaining 10% from the rest of the world. There should not be any controversy here. Notice that Fox just made this outcome irrelevance where in fact it should be the most important of the findings.
4. Therefore the conclusion suggested that 90% of guns seized in Mexico through drug raids come from the U.S.
5. This is not liberal bias at all. last i know, Mexico is a conservative state and their ambassador said in the article that almost 2k guns originating from the US are confiscated daily.
I saw many responses to the article on conservative blogs highlighting liberal media bias. Clearly many do not know how researches produce statistics. I hope these people understand that these researches are not ideological. If you don't believe it, then facts can't sway you opinion as it's already fix.
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