It’s no secret that the legacy media are one of the most ridiculously egotistical professional groups on the face of the planet. Mainstream journalists tend to have grossly inflated self-regard – and a complete lack of any ability to self-reflect.
Mainstream journalists are, in my experience, almost completely clueless about basic science and particularly inept at basic maths. Statistics is an especially black art for these egomaniacal scribblers.
Following a Thursday night appearance on MSNBC’s “The 11th Hour With Brian Williams,” [Mara] Gay became a viral sensation — for all the wrong reasons.
Gay and host Brian Williams discussed a since-deleted tweet which said billionaire former mayor Michael Bloomberg should have taken the $500 million he spent on his failed presidential bid and given $1 million to every American instead[…]
Williams and Gay endorsed the idea[…]“It’s an incredible way of putting it. It’s true,” Gay agreed.
Bloomberg spent $500 million. The population of America is 330 million. I’m pretty sure BFD readers can do a quick mental calculation without even taking their shoes off – unlike these very senior and highly-paid journalists. Williams is MSNBC’s anchor and Gay is on the New York Times editorial board.
Neither of the pundits caught the basic math error the original Twitter user had made— disbursing the half a billion dollars spent by Bloomberg would have resulted in each American getting about $1.50.
This isn’t an isolated case. During a recent Australian election, a Labor politician spruiking the NBN boasted that it would deliver internet speeds “40 percent faster – that’s 400 times faster!” The interviewer never noticed the glaring mathematical error.
When you’re caught out flunking a 3rd-grade maths problem, what should you do? Admit your mistake and maybe have a laugh at yourself?
Or scream “racism”?
A New York Times editorial board member, who was widely mocked for making a glaring math error while appearing on MSNBC last week, says the backlash was rooted in racism.
“A racist Twitter mob came for me over a trivial math mistake. I’m not going anywhere,” Mara Gay tweeted on Wednesday, the same day The Times published her op-ed responding to the controversy[…]
Gay’s response did little to defuse the criticism being lobbed against her, and arguably made it worse.
The tweet she posted linking to her Times op-ed received a hefty “ratio,” and numerous commenters accused her of “playing the victim.”
Other pointed out that Williams, an influential white man, had also been “widely ridiculed.”
pluralist.com/mara-gay-math-error-racist
Nope, it’s the maths. Maths is racist.
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