Tag Archives: Reuters

Shaming the Rotters of Reuters

Again

Reuters has a little problem with accuracy, especially when it involves their gun control hobbyhorse.

Swiss set to back tighter gun controls, avoid EU clash: poll
After militants killed scores in Paris and elsewhere in 2015, the EU in 2017 toughened laws against purchasing semi-automatic rifles like the ones used in those attacks, and made it easier to track weapons in national databases.

I asked Reuters, and specifically the author of that article for a reference for that semi-auto claim. Because all the rifles I saw fired in footage from the January Charlie Hebdo and November 2015 attacks were automatic.

No response. From either of them.

So it’s time to shame them again. Last time I did this, it took three tries to persuade them to get the data right.

Let’s look at the French terror attacks.

Charlie Hebdo Attacks

“They were armed with numerous semi-automatic handguns, automatic Kalashnikov rifles, a loaded M42 rocket launcher, 10 Molotov cocktails, 10 smoke grenades, a hand grenade, and 15 sticks of dynamite.”

Automatic rifles. Which I knew from seeing the car machinegunned. Rocket launcher. Grenades. All of which are already banned for French civilians. The only semi-auto were pistols.

“Automatic rifles…”

Even The Telegraph recognized automatic rifles when they saw them.

November Attacks

Weapons:
Tokarev semi-automatic pistol
Skorpion submachine gun
AKS-74?
AK103?

That was an early report, when it wasn’t clear exactly what the murdering scumbags used; just that they were AK-variant assault rifles. And the subgun; automatic.

Later, it got nailed down to specific models.

Specifically, the AK-variants were:
2 Type 56 assault rifle (Chinese AK variant assault rifle)
2 Zastava M70 machine guns (Serbian Ak variant assault rifle)

All automatic AK-variant rifles. Not semi-auto.

So, Reuters and Mr. Shields; would you care to correct the story… and note the correction?

[Permission to republish this article is granted so long as it is not edited and the author and The Zelman Partisans are credited.]

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[UPDATED] Rotters – Their THIRD iteration

See update below. Data changed again.


I mean Reuters. Making stuff up as they go. They published a chart: Violence in Europe: Average annual number of deaths from lethal gun victimisation per 100,000 in select European countries, 2010-2016.

If you click that link, I have no idea what data you’ll get. On Tuesday, it purported to show Cyprus, just as an example since it was the top of the chart… then, with an overall firearms death rate of 63.9 per 100,000, and 82.4/100K among males 15-29. I’m not familiar with Cyprus numbers, so maybe that is was correct.

I am a little more familiar with UK numbers. Reuters showed them at overall 2.6/100K, and 6.9/100K among 15-29 year-old males.

That bastion of accuracy, Wikipedia shows Cyprus at 1.87/100K overall, and the UK at 0.23/100K. But at least Wikipedia links to their sources. Reuters simply says “Source: World Health Organization.” Maybe, but I can’t find it.

For the record, Wikipedia shows the US at 11.96/100K, which happens to be exactly what CDC says for 2016. So there’s a cross-check on Wikipedia data, something lacking in the Reuters data. According to Reuters (Tuesday), there were at least twelve European countries with firearms death rates exceeding that of the US: Switzerland, Denmark, Italy, Ireland, Netherlands, Moldavia, Estonia, Norway, Macedonia, Serbia, Sweden, and Cyprus.

That’s not exactly what you usually hear: that the US has a higher rate than any other developed nation (or whatever term they toss out du jour).

Since I couldn’t find the WHO data, I wrote to Reuters.

Regarding the chart:

Violence in Europe
Average annual number of deaths from lethal gun victimisation per 100,000 in select European countries, 2010-2016.
http://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/editorcharts/VIOLENCE/0H0012Y7C163/index.html
Source: World Health Organisation
Gustavo Cabrera

I have been unable to locate the data on the WHO web site. Would it be possible to give me a link to the source data used by Gustavo Cabrera?

Thank you.

As expected, no response other than an automated ” being reviewed by our support staff” email.

But on Wednesday, the chart had changed.

Now, no country has an overall rate exceeding 0.5/100K; safely below that of the US. Maybe. But look closely, because on Tuesday, overall population was indicated by the black outline, and males 15-29 were pale blue. On Wednesday, the labelling is reversed. Either Wednesday labels are a mistake, or — unlike the US — males 15-29 are some of the safest people in Europe.

Take a look at the scale(s)…

On Tuesday:

0 to 100, to accommodate the sky-high Cyprus.

On Wednesday:

0.0 to that 0.5.

So suddenly everyone in Europe has a lower firearms death rate than the US… including nations that were experiencing civil wars in the indicated time frame. And the data of neither day bears any resemblance to that found elsewhere on the Internet. If Reuters is to be believed, the UK doesn’t have any firearms deaths. Which seems a little hard to believe.

UPDATE, Thursday, 8/16/2018: They’re on the third interation of that chart now.
But at least they now have a correction notice.

Correction: a previous version of this graphic contained a number of mathematical errors resulting in incorrect data and wide inaccuracies . This data has been changed to reflect the corrected numbers. For example, from 2010-2016 in Sweden there was an average of 1.2 gun-related deaths per 100,000 men aged 15-29, not 80.4 as was previously charted.

At least some of the numbers now bear a passing resemblance to data I found from other sources. Reuters provided me with a spreadsheet of their data, which was used to create this third version of the chart.

Note that numbers have changed, as have rankings, and even country labels.

The scale has changed again, too.

Reuters also gave me a link to the WHO database they used. Checking that will take a lot longer.

I think it’s pitiful — but typical — that Reuters only corrected this — and admitted to the correction — after being called out on it three times (yes, I sent them three messages regarding the inaccuracies). Once upon a time, Reuters was my go-to news service, but I ended that probably 20 years ago over just such errors and practices (not to mention an anti-RKBA slant you could ski down).


Carl is an unpaid TZP volunteer. If you found this post useful, please consider dropping something in his tip jar. He could use the money, what with truck repairs and recurring bills. Click here to donate via PayPal.
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