The Importance of Evaluating Media

Hello guys! Welcome back to my Blog! 

This week for my class we talked about the importance of evaluating the articles and the media. It is important to for us to be aware of our information is coming from the research it often cited in peer reviewed and journal and in a variety of articles. During this week I learned how easy it is for us to be tricked; it is easy for publishers to twist statistics or even misinterpret them. Also, some articles use bad research because it proves their point; that is not the way research should be used. It is wrong for publishers to use bias research or go out of their way to conduct their bias research with the intention to prove their point. 

An example that we went over in class was the APA (American Psychological Association) brief. If you do not know what the APA briefs is allow me to explain… the brief was written up to serve lawyers, and psychologist for the battle to prove that there are no significant differences when it comes to raising kids in heterosexual household or in a lesbian/gay house hold. The brief claimed that there was no significant disadvantage to raising children in a gay/lesbian household. Now, you may be wonder what the APA brief has to do with the importance of evaluating media. We’ll let me take you guys on a roller coaster; this APA brief used bias research and improper statistics to prove that there were no disadvantages.  The purpose of the brief was to compare gay/lesbian couples to heterosexual couples, however, most of the articles that the APA brief cited were comparing single mothers and single fathers. The APA did not cite an article where heterosexual couples were involved. In case that you guys still don’t get the catch; I will put it in very easy words. The APA brief was supposed to compare gay/lesbian couples and their ability to raise kids and what disadvantages there would be as compared to heterosexual couples. However, the APA never compared the gay/lesbian couples to their heterosexual counterpart. THEY DID NOT COMPARE WHAT THEY WERE CLAIMING TO COMPARE. 

What the APA did was wrong and they tricked everybody. This brief was brought up in a supreme court case where they were debating the matter of legalizing gay marriage. The major concern for the judges were the kids and the effects that it would bring on to the kids. Their brief claimed no significant difference but that is misleading. In their brief they were compared to single parents specifically single moms. Research has shown how kids tend to struggle more in school if they are raised by a single mother. Kids are more likely to fall into bad habits. So, by using single mothers as their comparing subjects there is already disadvantages on the table. Another problem were their sample sizes, they often used sample sizes smaller than 100 subjects. Some did not even pass 30 test subjects. This is a negative thing because it does not give us a big enough picture. We didn’t get a big enough spectrum to come to a proper scientific conclusion.  Though there is no prove the brief could have picked out 30 bad subjects to make their gay/lesbian couples seem better. However, at the end of the day it was wrong for the APA to use bad data to prove their point. 

It is up to us as readers to make sure that we are not being tricked or mislead by the information given to us. We need to be weary of where the information is coming from. We need to learn to be careful with the information we read.