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Yunji de Nies of ABC told us how the toy in the Happy Meal at McDonalds lures children into non-nutritious eating. CBS' Dean Reynolds showed us new cigarette brands now that the FDA has banned the use of the misleading Lite, Ultra Lite, Mild and Low Tar in names. "Benson & Hedges simply switched from Lite to a new word, DeLuxe, while others erased the label but retained the color-coded pack."
NBC filed part two of its Be Well, Be Healthy series with in-house physician Nancy Snyderman worrying about morbidly obese children and teenagers. On Monday, Tom Costello covered the theory that we are all getting heavier because our meal portions are larger because our plates are bigger. He offered a plug for the book The 9-Inch Diet by Alex Bogusky, who traces the growth of flatware from 9" diameter to 12" over the last 50 years.
Costello calculated that as a 33% increase in food area. I think pi-r-squared means a 77% increase.
No one at Nightly News seems capable of correctly calculating percentage increases or decreases. On the April 18 broadcast, Jeff Rossen told us that the year-to-date murder rate in Chicago had risen from 81 last year to 97 this year, a 16.5% increase. Wrong. That actually represents a 19.75% increase. This isn't rocket science. It's junior high school algebra. If Rossen and his producers can't calculate a simple increase in a murder rate, how can we trust them with the really difficult stuff?
And on the Jan. 26 Nightly News story about the President's proposed spending freeze, Brian Williams informed us that after exempting defense, medicare, social security and the other untouchable departments, "That leaves just 17% of a $3.5 trillion budget subject to this spending freeze...." An accompanying pie chart graphic gave us the same information: The $3.5 trillion budget "pie" had a slice sticking out that was labeled "17%" and "$477 billion". If Brian had bothered to check his math, he would have realized that 17% of $3.5 trillion is $595 billion, not $477 billion. Any third grader with a calculator could have figured that out. My advice to the Nightly News producers: Go out and hire a third grader with a calculator.
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