If The Disinformation Czarina Is Looking For DANGEROUS Falsehoods, Why Not Check Out What People Believe About Police Shootings?
05/07/2022
A+
|
a-
Print Friendly and PDF

Ever since learning that our federal government has appointed a disinformation czar—actually a czarina—to cleanse our nation from the blight of disinformation, I have been keeping my eye open for instances of disinformation she might deal with.

Well, here's a doozy. Back in February last year Skeptic magazine did a survey asking two questions.

  1. If you had to guess, how many unarmed Black men were killed by police in 2019?
  2. If you had to guess, in 2019 what percentage of people killed by police were Black?

They sorted responses by political orientation.

The commonest responses from participants identifying as "very liberal" were "about 1,000" to the first question and "60.4 percent" to the second [How Informed are Americans about Race and Policing?, Skeptic.com, February 20, 2021].

The actual answers were either 13 or 27 to the first question, depending on which database you use, and either 23 percent or 27 percent to the second, same qualification.

To the first question, eight percent of the very liberals and five and a half percent of the liberals thought the answer was "more than ten thousand."

Plainly we have a serious case of disinformation on police shootings of blacks. I offer it to the czarina for her scrutiny. No, no, don't thank me, ma'am; it's my civic duty.

Print Friendly and PDF