BREAKING: Where does information come from?

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 2018

Pretty much out of our asps: We largely skipped the latest evening of reactions to the latest mass shooting.

Such evenings are pretty much all alike. But even though we didn't watch much, we did see Brian say this:

WILLIAMS (2/14/18): I read a stat tonight, there have been 18 school shootings elsewhere in the world over the last two decades. In our country alone, there have been 18 school shootings in the last 35 days. I know you're not a politician, but you were at the crux of this public issue today. And do you believe lawmakers failed you in that moment? Do you believe we can do better than this?

We saw him say that at 11 PM Eastern. As it turns out, in the previous hour, Lawrence had said this:

O'DONNELL (2/14/18): Police say a 19-year-old who was expelled from the high school last year was apprehended as the shooter and as he was leaving—trying to leave, trying to blend in with the crowd of students, rushing away from the high school after the shooting. This is the 45th day of 2018, and in this year, we have already had 18 school shootings.

[...]

In a moment, my first guest will be a student who stayed calm and helped other students survive this shooting because he was ready for it. Because he knew this was possible in his school or in any school in America. And so, this video you're about to see, if you choose to watch it, is a horrifying look at something that has already happened at 18 schools in America this year, in just the first six weeks of this year.

Lawrence said that at 10 PM Eastern. At 9 PM, Rachel had said this:

MADDOW: It is honestly hard to—obviously it's hard to watch that video. In terms of patterns, in terms of what kind of event this is, you know, it's hard to keep track. We alone in the world as a country are plagued by this problem as a multiple times per week occurrence.

But we think this latest assault is at least the 18th school shooting in this country this year, just since the start of 2018. We're not even halfway into February.

According to Rachel, events of this kind are "a multiple times per week occurrence." Did that sound right when you heard it?

At 8 PM, Chris said it was "at least the twelfth, twelfth school shooting this year here at February 14th." Only the twelfth?Where does he get his information?

Through the evening on MSNBC, this had been the 18th school shooting, or event of this type, this year! Did that seem to make sense at the time? In this morning's Washington Post, Cox and Rich do a good job discussing what's wrong with that claim.

The claim ran wild on The One True Channel. To their credit, CNN eschewed it.

By the way, how good was the work in the Washington Post? In hard-copy, the analysis piece ran beneath this headline:

Gun-control group's widely shared tally of 2018 school shootings misleads

Good for them! They managed to say that the claim was "misleading," not that it was a lie, or even that it was flatly wrong. These distinctions exist in language because they exist in real life.

In what way is that claim "misleading?" If you read the Post report, you'll be able to find out. Under the circumstances, we'd say the claim is highly misleading. That said, your lizard may want to tell you that the claim's technically accurate.

Where does our information come from? When we traffic in BREAKING NEWS, it sometimes comes, live and direct, right straight out of our asps!

What should we do about these recurrent disasters? If we stop licking our lips about Stormy Daniels and chasing $4000 plane rides around, we might imaginably be able to figure that out.

Our chances wouldn't be super-good. But they would be better.