Unbiased: News Miner 24
Notes on media bias, crime in Colorado, homelessness, fearmongering about vaccine mandates, and more.
Unbiased Journalism
Complete Colorado published my new column on media bias. Mainly I reply to comments by Vince Bzdek of the Gazette. Following are some selections:
Generally journalists (reasonably) think that their work is important for promoting a healthy culture and politics. They also often rightly think that they have a role to play in holding powerful wrongdoers accountable. And most journalists want to earn a living doing their work. In an important sense, then, there is no such thing as agenda-free journalism.
News journalists should not have a narrow, partisan agenda, such as trying to get a particular party or candidate into power or a particular set of policies into law. . . .
Advocacy journalists properly are open about their aims to convince readers of something. They treat facts respectfully and do not omit facts that undercut their case. They are (or should be) objective in that sense. . . .
Bzdek claims “journalism should [not] try to direct readers to a certain viewpoint,” but that is not always the case. Previously I mentioned a flat-earth convention in Denver. Should a news journalist seriously not write from the perspective that the earth is spherical? That would be ridiculous. Being unbiased does not mean pretending to be a moron or assuming that one’s readers are morons.
Crime in Colorado
Former governor (and former prosecutor) Bill Ritter adds important context to discussions of crime in Colorado.
On crime generally:
Crime is rising in both blue and red states, urban and rural communities, red and blue cities.
On fentanyl and drug deaths:
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the most recent annual data on drug overdoses shows Colorado is #29 in statewide overdose deaths per 100,000 persons (West Virginia is #1) and #24 in total deaths (California is #1). According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, Colorado is #26 for synthetic opioids and fentanyl deaths (Florida is #1).
On auto thefts:
The law establishing different penalties for car theft based on vehicle value has been on the books for decades. It was first enacted in 1999 by a Republican legislature. And it was subsequently amended to adjust the car value cut-off for penalties.
The 2021 bill was yet another adjustment to the dollar value cut-off — and that bill went through the Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice process with broad support, including support from the state’s district attorneys.
Okay, good to know. I still think it’s bullshit to incentive criminals to steal poor people’s cars. Stealing anyone’s car is a serious crime and should be treated as such.
Indeed, “All of the elected district attorneys in Colorado agreed to support a measure that would make all auto thefts a felony, no matter the value of the car,” CPR reports. The governor and criminal justice reform leaders agree.
In related news, Radley Balko reviews that homicide rates are higher in Republican states.
CSI on Homelessness
The Common Sense Institute has out a new report on Denver Metro homelessness. Here to me is the key bit:
As resources to address homelessness have increased annually, the unsheltered and chronically homeless populations have also increased. Housing affordability in Colorado has plummeted, overall price levels are at record highs due to inflation, and the state’s housing inventory is dangerously low.
To a large degree, homelessness is a problem of inadequate housing stock. You can’t fix the problem of homelessness without freeing up the housing market.
I still haven’t seen a report about whether and how regional spending on homelessness impacts regional homeless populations. I suspect that some homeless people move to where spending is high.
Here’s an eye-popping claim:
The estimated 2023 spending per person experiencing homelessness or in PSH (according to a range of daily count estimates) in Denver is expected to be between $37,309 and $73,450.
That’s a lot!
In related news:
A Colorado Sun analysis of Denver Police Department data found that crime reports decreased in the neighborhoods where Safe Outdoor Space sites have operated, even as reported crime increased across Denver.
Conspiracism about Vaccine Mandates
Previously I discussed how Heidi Ganahl suggested (but did not outright claim) that a school mandate for Covid vaccines is a serious possibility. It is not. But that hasn’t stopped one of Ganahl’s supporters from promoting the conspiracy fantasy.
I’m going to relate the relvant facts as they happened, not as they came to my attention (with a couple of others’ typos cleaned up).
On October 22, Governor Jared Polis posted to Twitter about taking his family to a corn maze. Polis included four photos, one of which shows one of his children wearing a medical mask.
An anonymous account posted:
Your child is outside, in fresh air. There is NO scientific reason they are masked, unless they are sick. If your child is sick, your child should be at home; not gallivanting through pumpkin patches with a mask on for photo ops.
Comment: I partly agree with this. There’s no good medical reason to wear a mask outside except perhaps in a densely crowded area. However, I have been around children who have chosen to wear a mask outside just for warmth. Regardless, who cares if someone wears a medical mask outside? Does it affect you? No. So maybe mind your own business? To each his own. Speculating about why the child wore a mask is pointless.
Heidi Ganahl’s Twitter account created a screen capture of Polis’s original Tweet with the reply quoted, and shared that screen capture with others. (I’m assuming that people other than Ganahl probably have access to that account.)
Then the self-proclaimed Twitter parody site, 9mm News, posted Ganahl’s screen capture along with the flagrantly dishonest message:
VAX MANDATE DOG WHISTLE. In an apparent nod to the Democratic base advocating for new vaccine mandates for kids, Jared Polis masks his son in an outdoor setting even though kids have lowest risk of Covid, which has a 99%+ survival rate.
No doubt some Democrats have called for a Covid mandate in schools, but “the Democratic base” has not, and Polis has not. That’s just a bullshit conspiracy fantasy. See Our World in Data for an analysis of Covid mortality.
In a remark aimed at Ganahl, Kyle Clark initially speculated, “Just a heads up that it appears you were still logged in as @heidiganahl when you took the screenshot to post with this burner account.” I then posted my own screen capture of the 9mm News Tweet along with a link to Clark’s remark.
It appears Clark was wrong about the relationship between Ganahl’s screen capture and the 9mm News Tweet (as Clark later reported). Ernest Lee Luning asked the Ganahl campaign about this. Here is the reply:
Our campaign does not run that parody account, nor do we have access to it. Heidi shared that screenshot with supporters and evidently it found its way online.
Notice that the Ganahl campaign did not distance itself from the message expressed.
Obviously 9mm News is not genuinely a “parody” account as it claims. It’s an account used for trolling and for driving an agenda. The leftist ColoradoPols collected a sampling of Tweets. Unfortunately, its brand of nonsense is all too typical among today’s Colorado “conservatives.”
Quick Takes
Skiing: Colorado Ski season has started.
Cake: “California court rules in favor of Christian baker who refused to bake cake for lesbian wedding,” Fox reports. This is relevant to comparable cases in Colorado.