One Guy's Opinion on the Political Scene By: Jim Herndon
The Enterprise Record writers might want to clean up either their reporter skills or their math skills or possibly both.
The paper has been onto a series about the Homeless – a topic newspaper people dearly love to indulge in periodically. Makes them feel like crusaders out there exposing society’s malfunctions. Of course they have been expounding upon this for a hundred years and nothing ever really is accomplished except temporary, expedient moves that make everyone feel good for a couple of days.
Tuesday, the paper laid on a front-page display of homelessness statistics: 35% have high school diplomas. Wednesday’s follow-up piece (always a follow-up or three for investigative reporting) had 50% high school diplomas. Tuesday’s piece had more statistics: 42% physical or developmental disabilities, 31% mental disability, 28% drug addicts, and 18% alcoholics. Well, that adds up to 119%, so, perhaps a clarification comment would have been in order suggesting the readers either not add up the percentages or that the statistics collectors were so sloppy that the categories are not mutually exclusive – some homeless people appear in more than one category. In that case, the numbers are meaningless.
