AP Blows It Again, Trades Hype for Accuracy

I have previously written about how news reports are often sensationalized in the media, and nowhere is this currently more evident than in stories involving teens and sex. (See my article “Media Mythmaking 101: Katie Couric’s “The 411 on Teens and Sex” at the “Past Essays” link below.) When a new study was published in the journal Pediatrics in early April with “news” about teens and oral sex, I waited for news articles to misread the study and adopt an alarmist tone. It didn’t take long: Associated Press writer Carla K. Johnson filed a story that got picked up across the country. The story can be found here.

The Seattle Post Intelligencer used the headline “Study on Teens and Oral Sex Holds Surprises” (which is not true, as the journal authors themselves admit); Kentucky.com wrote “Study: 9th-graders See Oral Sex as No Big Deal” (which is also not true, if anyone had bothered to read the study); Wired News used the slug “Teens: Intercourse Riskier Than Oral Sex,” which is an accurate but obvious and meaningless headline. While writers aren’t responsible for the headlines that news outlets use (that usually falls to editors), the problems extended beyond misleading headlines. I immediately sent an e-mail to the Associated Press to ask about this:

Dear AP writer Carla Johnson, I came across your April 4, 2005, piece on ABC News.com, titled “Teens: Oral Sex a Safe, Common Practice.” I read the study the report was based on, and I am puzzled by the headline because it contradicts what the study says. You wrote that "about one in five ninth-graders report having had oral sex." So less than 20% of the respondents report having oral sex; how, then, is "oral sex a common practice"? I guess it depends on how you define "common." About the same percentage of children have had a medical diagnosis of asthma, or suffer some form of mental health problem; does that mean that asthma and mental health problems are "common" among teens?

You seem to have changed (or misunderstood) what "common" was referring to in the context of the study. The piece says "The teenagers...also say oral sex is less risky, more common and more acceptable for their age group than intercourse." As this sentence makes clear, "common" is referring not to absolute incidence of oral sex behaviors, but incidence as compared to intercourse. This is a remarkably mundane finding that should surprise exactly nobody: Teens have oral sex more frequently than intercourse. If anything, this should be good news.

Has the incidence of oral sex among teens climbed? Is oral sex among teens more common than ever? We don't know, because you don't give any statistics or background information to help readers understand the numbers.

On the face of it, your piece seems like a classic case of alarmist journalism: Taking a very small sample size study (580 students from only two schools) and generalizing the results to make it sound like an alarming trend. I know that the headline "One-Fifth of Small Sample of Teens Report Oral Sex" isn't as sensational as "Teens: Oral Sex a Safe, Common Practice" but it would seem more accurate. Am I missing something?

I never got a response back. Of course, the AP isn’t the only one making public gaffes:

One of the most pervasive and annoying things about journalism is when news reporters and organizations only pretend to inform their audience. They will say things that don't make sense and spout non-sequiturs as if they logically follow. I discuss this in Media Mythmakers, a practice I refer to as giving "The Illusion of Meaning." A few days ago I noticed an example and wrote to the news organization to request an explanation. Below is an e-mail sent to ABC News and World New Tonight. If and when I recieve a response, I will post it in a follow-up.

Dear World News Tonight,

Wednesday’s broadcast (March 30, 2005) featured a news piece by Bill Redeker titled, “The Morning After Controversy.” The segment was about the “morning after pill” to be made available for rape victims. There seems to be an editing or reporting error in the piece, because the first clip has nothing to do with the topic or controversy.

Redeker sets up a clip from a woman named Mimi Schaeffer, who “was raped when she was fifteen, when there was no access to emergency contraception.” Schaeffer then appears at a news conference podium and states: “You know that you have been traumatized when you suddenly have a memory that is so repressed it takes twenty years for that memory to return.”

As Redeker may know, there is much controversy over the validity of “repressed memories,” but that is beside the point. Schaeffer states that her rape left her so traumatized that she only remembered it two decades later. If Schaeffer didn’t know she was raped until twenty years later, how would the “morning after pill” have been any use to her even if it had been available? Obviously a rape victim must know she has been raped in order to seek out and use the pill; Schaeffer is quoted on World News Tonight as suggesting exactly the opposite, so I can’t understand why Redeker included it in his report. Did Redeker or the ABC News editors somehow miss this, or assume the viewing audience wouldn’t notice?

Benjamin Radford