Over at Slate’s media desk, Jack Shafer has developed a little sub-speciality in debunking investigative stories about various social diseases. It’s wicked, thankless work. Shafer got into a very nasty little donnybrook with New York Times magazine after he nitpicked an extensive story by Peter Landesman on a covert sex-slave ring in New Jersey. Shafer’s typical MO is to argue the numbers in such stories–when the numbers of victims are vague or insufficient or impeachable, he usually disimisses the story as a sensationalistic over-reach of a trend-obsessed media. It’s a fine thing to decry sensationalism, but Shafer could pick easier and more deserving targets; the Times magazine is not really the wall to which that sloppy pasta is going to stick.
Maybe Newsweek magazine is more worthy of Shafer’s rapier. This week, Jack argues that Newsweek’s current cover story on methamphatamine use in the US has a) identified a trend embarrassingly late, and b) overstated the seriousness of the meth problem. Shafer would apparently prefer not to have it written about at all, or maybe as a light , how-to trend story in a bleeding-edge magazine like Vice. If there is not a body count, it is not a serious crisis. Thus it feels like a down week in Shafer’s world, but with yesterday’s massive bombing in Iraq, we’re sure he’ll perk up again by his next deadline.
This reminds us, somewhat ironically, of the contrarian story in the Times magazine a few weeks ago about how “necessary” child safety seats are in cars. That alarming article, written by Dubner and Levitt (the new Freakonomics columnists poached from the world of hardcovers), suggested that a child is no safer in a car seat than out of one. The article used just one standard: mortality. Death. Those of us with children do not measure safety in such a cruel, absolute way. We tend to try to keep our children from the least harm, the better to never have to consider the ultimate heartbreak. Likewise, the fact that two million other children are using crystal meth, and whether or not that constitutes a true “crisis” in the mind of a journalist in Washington, D.C., neither consoles nor excites the soul-sick parent of a meth-addicted teenager.
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