Can You Trust the Media?

An Experience with NBC’s DATELINE

On December 14, 1997 - NBC DATELINE aired a story called "LA Confidential" exposing a case of spousal abuse by a police officer in the Los Angeles Police Department. The story was worked on by Associate Producer Carolyn Redford and Assistant Producer Julia Paige and reported by Maria Shriver.

One of the first sentences out of Maria Shriver was "Every nine seconds a woman in this country is beaten by her husband or boyfriend." This got me thinking. It seemed like an awful lot, so I did two things: 1) wrote DATELINE to get the source of this quote so I could understand how this figure was calculated and 2) do some of my own calculations and comparisons (See Appendix B).

Chronological Summary of Events (See Appendix A for copies of letters)

12/14/97 Certified letter sent to Neal Shapiro, Executive Producer of NBC DATELINE asking for source of statistic.

2/3/98 Sent a second certified letter to Mr. Andrew Lack, President NBC NEWS & cc: Carolyn Redford, Julia Paige & Neal Shapiro.

2/18/98 Letter from Neal Shapiro referencing the National Resource Center on Domestic Violence (NRC) quote.

2/26/98 Received the study from NRC. The quote was listed, but no data or methodology was there to back up this statistic.

3/2/98 Received letter from Janet Pearce, Senior Producer, NBC News Standards & Practices saying hope all is well, contact me if the reply was not satisfactory.

3/9/98 Wrote Janet Pearce letting her know I did receive a reply from NBC and NRC, but this was only a sound bite and did not contain the data I requested. I let her know I was pursuing the source of the study further and would get back with her.

3/16/98 Received packet from NRC with The Commonwealth Fund Commission on Women’s Health, Columbia University. Alas, this too did not contain the source data, assumptions and methodology for the basis of the quote.

3/20/98 FAXed Ellen Futter, Chair, The Commonwealth Fund requesting source data to verify the quote.

3/23/98 Received a letter from N. Rothschild of The Commonwealth Fund stating that the actual figure is every 15 seconds and not every 9 seconds. Still no data to back this up, but was referred to Victim Services organization in New York City.

4/1/98 Received letter from Janet Pearce, NBC News applauding "viewers who do independent research" but saying "We feel very confident of its accuracy."

4/3/98 Sent a letter to Janet Pearce, NBC News letting her know that I already found out the statistic is wrong (off by almost 100%), but that I still didn’t have the data I needed and was still pursuing this story. Couldn’t help but think of DATELINE and fire bombing pickup trucks.

4/10/98 FAXed Victim Services of NYC requesting source data to verify the quote.

4/15/98 Received letter from Janet Pearce, NBC News stating their staff confirmed the original quote of every 9 seconds and that the 15 second number was "slightly different." Since viewers were not misled, a correction was not warranted.

4/15/98 Ironically, on the same day I received a letter from Rhonie Lester, Victim Services stating "That particular statistic has been removed from our fact sheets, and I have advised other organizations using the statistic to do the same. The original source for the statistic is unknown."

4/21/98 I wrote Janet Pearce, NBC News letting her know I am no longer pursuing research on this since there is no basis for the quote used in NBC’s DATELINE "LA Confidential" story.

Issues Raised

1. The traditional media makes the claim that they can be trusted to do research and are subject to (internal) editorial review (as opposed to Internet stories). But what message does this example send?

2. Have the NBC DATELINE researchers applied due diligence? After all, they chose to use this statistic for "shock value" and should have guessed that someone would question such a quote.

3. Why has NBC News mounted such resistance to air a correction? Is this typical in this industry? How "wrong" does something have to be to get a correction aired? Perhaps corrections are based on monetary liability and since it is unlikely anyone would sue NBC News on behalf of men or those falsely charged with abuse, there’s no need for a correction (i.e. it’s cheaper to let it slide).

4. Abuse is a real problem - both real abuse and the abuse of the abuse excuse. Judges, bureaucrats and policy makers use "research" like this all the time - and most won’t take the time to independently verify statistics. It’s been estimated that false abuse charges make up less than 10% of the total, however, during custody battles, this figure can jump to 70%. Like the boy who cried wolf, the more people cry abuse, the more people will doubt all claims of abuse.