Reuters Spins Flu Story

Reuters Spins Flu Story







Janet C. Phelan
Activist Post

In an article entitled, "Flu reaches epidemic level in U.S., says CDC",
reporter Sharon Begley pumps up alarm concerning the virulent and
epidemic nature of the current flu sweeping the country. However, the
report admits it lacks documentation of the very numbers it purports to
use to buttress its claims.

While the Reuters article, published on January 11, solemnly announces
that a pandemic is officially at play when the flu achieves a rate of
7.2 % of deaths during a time period, it also earnestly states that
there is no definitive count of the total deaths caused by the flu.

Wait a minute here. The lead paragraph of this story stated: “Influenza
has officially reached epidemic proportions in the United States, with
7.3 percent of deaths last week caused by pneumonia and the flu, the
U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Friday.”

So the exact percentage of deaths caused by flu is known but the number of flu deaths is not?

I wasn't planning to go on a rant about the idiocy of
our mainstream media at this juncture, but it does appear that a few
things must be said. First of all, reporters must be schooled in
statistics in order to complete a journalism graduate program. That
course is not for wimps, I can assure you. While most J-school students
are more verbally than mathematically inclined, anyone who had been in
my class at the University of Missouri Graduate School of Journalism
would have received a failing grade if they had produced this article.


Reporter Begley goes on to try to explain the inadequacy of the current
flu vaccine by stating that the little virus buggers must be hiding
somewhere in people's bodies out of reach of the vaccine. You know, a
kind of microscopic "hide and seek"....The article cites the CDC as
calling this season's vaccine “moderately effective” then goes on to say
that four out of ten people who receive the vaccine and are exposed to
the flu will get sick.

I am beginning to wonder if J-Schools are now mandating George Orwell's classic 1984
as required reading, in order to further groom reporters as to how to
say one thing while actually saying the opposite. And maybe Journalism
402 has been renamed “Advanced Doublespeak.”

Source:-
http://www.activistpost.com/2013/01/reuters-spins-flu-story.html