I like to stay updated on the news of the day, so I just registered for a Ground News account. Ground News is a news aggregator. They gather news and categorise it by political leaning and the publication’s record on factuality. Their claim is to reveal blind spots so help people not get caught in perspective bubbles. It also shows when a story is picked up predominantly by one side or another. I’ve seen ads for this on many channels and have for a while, so it’s likely that you have, too. This is not an ad.

This article attracted my attention, not because of the content but because of the headline. As a statistician, this bothers me. As a communicator, the damage is trebled. I don’t receive any compensation for clicking the link. I include it for reference for those who are not familiar with the service.

Notice the choice of writing, ‘1-in-6 parents reject vaccine recommendations‘.

Two things shine through.

1. The use of ‘reject’ – a negative verb.
2. The use of ‘1-in-6’ – the figure accompanying the negative verb – 17%.

Statistically, this means that 5-in-6 parents follow vaccine recommendations – 83%.

This is the summary view. Scan down, and notice the Left-leaning Raw Story references a ‘staggering number’ of parents who reject vaccines. Notice also how the language softens – the claim is revised to ‘delay or reject’. Without clicking into the story, what is this breakdown? I’m not sure, but this is what sensationalism looks like to attract clicks.

Interestingly, the outlets tend to use different language and give different attention. What percentage of this is due to political bias and which is benign editorial licence is unclear.

On balance, the articles – Left, Right, and Centre – unanimously note that vaccine use is down, incidences of measles are up, RFK policies appear to be exacerbating the health management issue. The worst offenders are ‘very’ religious, white, politically conservative people. This cohort aligns with the RFK and the current administration.

The poll also found that parents who have postponed or avoided vaccinating their children tend to be white, conservative, and highly religious, and some choose to homeschool.

For this story, one of the sources was Greek and another French. Some claim to be behind a paywall, but this didn’t pose a problem for me. Perhaps they offer some complementary views.

Separately, on the right-hand side of the top image, there is a bias indicator: It shows that 57% of the reports were from Left-leaning journals, 36% Centre, leaving the remaining 7% to Right-leaning sources.

When I returned to write this post, I noticed that the reporting had changed as more Centre-focused reports picked up the story.

If I were to guess, this story shines a negative light on the Right, so they may just be waiting for the news cycle to pass.

In the (Right-facing) Greek story I read, the reporting wasn’t materially different to the other stories, which is to say they don’t try to render the story through rose-colour glasses.