Here are a couple of recent examples of bad reporting, wherein a cited source gives information basically contradictory to the conclusion that it supposedly shows.
e.g. 1, Polls show Wendy Davis out of touch with American women. Assertion:
Only 2 percent of women respondents said they supported abortion up to birth.
Reading the source, you do indeed find in question 22 that that only 2% of women asserted that abortion should always be legal, but this was listed as a voluntary response given instead of choosing one of the two answers the pollsters listed as acceptable. Scroll up a bit in the same source and what do you find? Question 21 shows 23% of women asserting that abortion should always be legal. I'd agree with the World magazine article that Wendy Davis is indeed out of sync with American women in her support for abortion, but there's no justification for overstating the position.
e.g. 2, Kidnapped and Sold: Inside the Dark World of Child Trafficking in China. Assertion:
The U.S. State Department estimates that every year, around 20,000 children are kidnapped in China, and some independent estimates are much higher.
Read the cited State Department report and what do you find? The following statement:
There were no reliable estimates of the number of children kidnapped
The report does indeed acknowledge media reports of 20,000 kidnappings per year but given that it expressly notes a lack of reliable estimates it seems duplicitious to cite this as a State Department estimate. Do such kidnappings take place? Undoubtedly. However, exactly how often such kidnappings take place is another question entirely.
