When folks talk about how important it is to keep an eye on how media “frames” the news, I can understand people’s eyes glazing over. But let me present a good example here, and maybe it’ll be both clearer, and unsoporific. Consider this article from Wired about high tech contributions: https://www.wired.com/story/tech-workers-overwhelmingly-support-democrats/
What’s the headline lead you to believe? If you’re me, it’s that tech folks spend the majority of their contributions on Democrats, right? “Overwhelmingly” would imply a *huge* proportion. But look at the chart below.
What’s the actual breakdown? Tech folks spend 1% of their contributions on Republican candidates/causes, 9% on company PACs (which is a whole different post), and 23% on Democrats. So yes, 23% is “overwhelmingly” greater than 1%, sure. But the thing that genuinely surprised me was we spend 67% on non-partisan groups.
67% is a huge amount, nearly 3 times what is spent on Democrats and far more than all other categories combined. And *that* is the real piece of news here. A much more accurate, less deceptive headline would be “Tech Workers Overwhelmingly Support Non-Partisan Causes.” That’s the actual news here.
Is it a surprise that tech people vote for Democrats? No, of course not. So why trumpet it? Why to throw fuel on the partisanship fire and sell more magazines, obviously. Highlighting the findings differently wouldn’t cause that frisson of anger in Republican readers that drives clicks.
And the thing is, IMO the chart shows you how tech workers think better than, “They’re all Democrats!”, which is what the headline implies. We’re not all Democrats. We may be massively progressive—I believe we are—but not to the point where we think our money is best spent by a party that is only nominally progressive and is entirely too close to Wall St., too hawkish, too wimpy to fight for the causes we believe are important.
What would be far more interesting, WIRED, would be if you broke down that other 67% and showed just which non-partisan groups tech workers contributed to. Because that would show what we care about, and that might even show the hidebound Democratic Party what they might actually want to spend their time and efforts on if they want to attract tech workers.
This is IMO deceptive news framing in action, and it happens all the time. (And I know for a fact that reporters are frequently driven crazy by headline writers, who are a different group entirely.)
Do better, media. The friggin’ country is at stake.
