Media and Facts

You can’t trust anything you see reported in the news. You especially can’t trust a headline.

Boyfriends Do More Housework Than Husbands

My wife found that headline at her online news source. She showed it to me for a chuckle, and she mentioned that she needed a boyfriend to come clean her house. I know she was just kidding me, so no one think I took it seriously. But I read the article.

The article was reporting on a survey conducted by a team of at least two people (George Mason University and North Carolina State University were mentioned). The survey gave data on who does the most housework among husbands/wives and live-in boyfriends/girlfriends. Turns out, the data was obtained by having the boyfriends, husbands, girlfriends, and wives report on themselves. Alright, that right there is enough of a flaw—that’s like doing an IQ survey by having individuals report their own IQ. (Yeah, I’m 220 IQ, myself.)

But even better, the survey was of just a few thousand couples (8,119 males and 9,517 females—note the different numbers) in 28 nations. Twenty-eight nations. Would that number include nations where it is the culture that only women do housework? That would kind of skew the data, would it not.

* * *

Back in my college days, when I was working as a salesman in an electronics department, a reporter came in and wanted to look at the [then very] new personal electronic phone books. I had only a very little knowledge of how they generally worked, but between the two of us looking through some of the user manuals, we figured out a couple of them.

After spending about an hour looking over the features and plugging in some fake numbers, the reporter had enough info to write his article for the local newspaper. He wanted to know my name for the article. I declined to give my name because I didn’t want to be mentioned in the paper. He tried to talk me into it, but I really just wasn’t interested in having my name in this article—I’m strange like that; sue me.

Well, the next day, when I came to work after school, I found out that all day long, people had been coming to the electronics department asking to talk to the “expert” about the new personal electronic phone books mentioned in the newspaper. Seven people had come in after reading that article. One of the salesmen had gone and picked up the day’s paper and sure enough, the reporter mentioned the store (the only one by that name in that town) and the “expert.”

Journalists — don’t trust ’em.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com