January 05, 2018
That probably would be have been helpful information to readers of a Washington Post article that told readers:
“Up to $2 billion in U.S. aid could be affected by President Donald Trump’s suspension of security assistance to Pakistan, which is accused of failing to crack down on Taliban militants targeting U.S. personnel in neighboring Afghanistan, a senior U.S. administration official said Friday.”
Almost none of the Post’s readers would have any idea of how much $2 billion means to the United States (or to Pakistan, it’s about 0.7 percent of its GDP). The paper could have saved space by just leaving the numbers out of the article since it wasn’t providing information by including them. Unfortunately, there is a reporter fraternity ritual that requires they use numbers that everyone, including them, know to be meaningless to their audience.
While we’re on the topic, the $2.4 billion in food aid the United States provides to the UN to combat famine in Africa comes to a bit less than 0.06 percent of the federal budget. Many people mistakenly believe that such aid is a major component of the U.S. budget. If newspapers focused on informing their readers, instead of fraternity rituals, perhaps the public would be better informed.
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