It appears that this progressive long running program (TV and Radio simulcast) has provided a test of several aspects of their audience- attention, logical analysis and active participation among others. Here is the link to the segment, along with the full exact transcript of the one minute news report. (reproduced below ) I will include a poll that I ask readers to take and then will give my analysis after the squiggle.
Here's what the moderator, Amy Goodman, spoke at about 8 minutes into the program on Wednesday, November 26, 2014 (with a focus on the second paragraph)
The Obama administration is releasing new limits on ozone, the most widespread form of air pollution, and the main ingredient in smog. Ozone, which is formed through a reaction of pollutants from power plants, factories and cars, has been linked to asthma, heart disease and premature death. U.S. restrictions imposed under President George W. Bush remain far looser than those in the European Union and Canada.
Environmental groups have sued the Obama administration for tighter standards, prompting a court order to issue new draft regulations by December 1. According to the New York Times, the new rules would reduce the current threshold for ozone pollution from 75 parts per billion to between 65 and 70 parts per million.
I was taken by one thing in her report that didn't make sense, as I had read the article that she described in the Times. So, I turned to my wife, who had not read the article, and said that this was wrong, but my wife noticed something different that didn't require anything but a logical mind.
Here the link to theN.Y. Times article Goodman referenced and what she paraphrased:
The proposed regulation would lower the current threshold for ozone pollution from 75 parts per billion to a range of 65 to 70 parts per billion, according to people familiar with the plan.
For any on this website who are not familiar with this program Wikipedia describes it as:
Democracy Now! is a daily progressive, nonprofit, independently syndicated news hour that airs[2] on more than 1,250 radio, television, satellite and cable TV networks around the globe.[3] The award-winning one-hour news program is hosted by investigative journalists Amy Goodman[4] and Juan Gonzalez.[3][5] The program is funded entirely through contributions from listeners, viewers, and foundations, and does not accept advertisers, corporate underwriting, or government funding.[3]
I'm a fan, contribute regularly and watch it every day. There are reports on this program that are not heard anywhere else, and I admire Amy's courage in going into the belly of the beast, and the respect she generally garners from even her political opponents. She herself has been manhandled by police who were trying to keep her a distance for demonstrations.
Now back to this segment. Her statement, where she accentuated the two words, "million" and "billion," were a misquote of the Times story. I stopped the playback realizing that her statement reflected a thousand fold reduction of acceptable ozone levels, when normally any change in pollution standards would be a percentage decrease.
My wife caught the more serious error, that even if what she said had been accurate, a more rigid standard could not be what she said, which was: "the new rules would reduce the current threshold for ozone pollution from 75 parts per billion (a lower concentration) to between 65 and 70 parts per million (one that is higher). logically and syntactically, we can't reduce a lower amount to a higher.
She not only misstated the degree of change, but the direction. This is not a condemnation of this program, but a window on the American public. Could it be that the broadcast medium itself fosters this, especially when it is from those who reflect our own values. It would be nice to believe that progressives are different, the "reality party." But the beginning of such active critical thinking is digging into what is said by those who should have resources to report events.
The internet transcript shows this error made three days ago, with no correction noted. So, I can only assume that of their millions of viewers, those who noticed did not care to point it out to the broadcaster. It would be more scary to believe I was the only one who had caught it.
I will send them this article, and see if they make a correction.
---------------
A twist on the subject of Ozone is that what we call the "Ozone Layer" in the Troposphere is better when it is denser, while Ozone in the atmosphere, what we breath is the reverse. This is what is being described here, as explained in this Wikipedia Article.