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Distorting the Homeless Numbers
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18792 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
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12 / 1991 |
2,071 Words |
| Author
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Tim Graham
Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research
Center, a press-watch institute based in Alexandria, Virginia. |
For most of the last decade, news stories on homelessness have often used a figure in the millions--most commonly, three million--as a national estimate of the homeless population. When the Census Bureau announced the results of its one-night partial count of the homeless on April 12, however, all three broadcast networks--ABC, CBS, and NBC--completely ignored the story on their evening news shows. So did Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News & World report.
Why? The Census Bureau count--less than 230,000--was dramatically at odds with the most frequently reported estimate of three million, which should have attracted the media's attention. While every previous national estimate had relied on comparatively small counts that were extrapolated nationwide, the Census Bureau sent out 15,000 enumerators, making their count more scientifically reliable than any previous number.
That's not the way it was reported at all. The nation's newspapers framed the story with homeless activists' outrage. On April 13, the headlines told the story: "Census Count of Homeless Is Disputed" (New York Time); "Advocates for Homeless Say Census Count Too Low" (Chicago Tribune): "Census Attacked For Incomplete Homeless Count" (Newsday); and "Census Bureau's Homeless Tally Is Disputed--Local Advocates Call State Figures Laughable" (Seattle Times).
But reporters, who are supposed to be skeptical, did not extend their skepticism to the homeless activists, accepting their arguments and their estimates. Had homeless activists sent 15,000 enumerators out to verify their numbers on the homeless population? No, but to the media, somehow, they were more credible.
How did their favorite number--three million--come to be accepted? In 1982, homeless activist Mitch Snyder's Community for Creative Nonviolence issued a report on homelessness that concluded: "We are convinced the number of homeless people in the United States could reach 3 million or more during 1983." What was Snyder's methodology? Unlike the Census, Snyder simply called up shelter providers and asked them for their counts.
Of 83 national and local estimates examined by the General Accounting Office in a study released in August 1988, only Snyder's study claimed a number as high as three million, and it was not one of the 27 studies the GAO considered "useful." But the media disagreed.
They did this despite Snyder's
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