The Metropolis

Don’t trust the “Experts” – especially when you don’t know who they are

Cila Warncke | Friday 13 May, 2011 18:18

On the morning of Tuesday, 12 April in Newburgh, New York, a man called Jean Pierre was served with an order of protection barring him from “harassment, menacing [or] reckless endangerment” of his wife Lashanda Armstrong and their children. About 6PM he arrived at her flat and – according to a witness – shouted: “Open the fucking door.” Following an argument, he left at 7PM. Fifteen minutes later Lashanda Armstrong committed suicide by driving into the freezing Hudson River in New York with her four children in the car. The eldest, 10, escaped through a window; the other three died.

Jocelyn Noveck, an enterprising Associated Press writer, decided to use the heart-breaking event as the hook for an article headlined Moms killing kids not nearly as rare as we think wherein she makes the shocking claim that: “Experts say more mothers than fathers kill their children under 5 years of age.” Noveck dropped this assertion in the media pond on 16 April, the Huffington Post picked it up in a flash, the next day MSNBC reprinted the article using the quote as the sub-head, by 18 April this “fact” was being discussed on blogs, by 25 April it was reported as news in the Jamaica Observer. Undoubtedly the ripples are still spreading.

Yet for all the articles spinning off and spiralling through cyberspace I can’t, for the life of me, track down the source of Noveck’s dubious assertion. Who are these “experts”? And where are the data? Noveck doesn’t reveal her source – if there is one. There are other, legitimate quotes in the article, yet the “more mothers than fathers kill their children” gem – clearly the most audacious and horrifying titbit – is merely attributed to invisible “experts”. That alone should warn a careful reader to not take this on faith.

Noveck also states that, “mothers kill their children in this country much more often than most people would realize… by conservative estimates it happens every few days, at least 100 times a year.” Another startling “fact” offered without a shred of reference or supporting evidence. When Noveck does get around to including verifiable data it sharply contradicts the case she’s making for maternal murderousness. According to the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System – part of the US Department of Health and Human Services, there were “an estimated 1,740 child fatalities — meaning when a child dies from an injury caused by abuse or neglect — in 2008.”Now that is a shocking number. Supposing Noveck’s other figures are accurate, that means 100 of those 1,740 children are killed by their mothers; in other words, just over five percent. That means ninety-five percent of children killed through abuse and neglect are not killed by their mothers – which rather undermines the ‘Moms killing kids not nearly as rare as we think’ argument.

When a journalist is so clearly bent on pushing a questionable agenda it is good to seek impartial evidence. The National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System website – source of the 1,740 child fatalities figure – reveals that: Fathers and mothers’ boyfriends are most often the perpetrators in abuse deaths. This disturbing fact, however, isn’t newsworthy, because such cases are far too common. Noveck, and her editors, had a chance to write a responsible article about the sad death of a beleaguered mother and her children. Instead, they concocted a lurid mess of unsubstantiated facts and unverifiable claims in order to advance a provably untrue argument. Thanks to the power of the Associated Press, this shabby journalism spread across the web and around the world without a dissenting whisper. It is troubling testimony to the power of the press and a reminder to never, ever trust “experts” without checking the evidence.

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