Hey, Somebody Call the Hyperbole Police

We liked Don Loepp's blog post from last Friday and wanted to share it. We agree, Don.

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Whenever you read a statistic in a story like this — “The amount of plastic produced since the beginning of the Plastics Age is enough to wrap the world in plastic bags six times over” — you can thank a journalism school professor. (That example came from the trailer for the film Plastic Planet, which opened in U.S. theaters Jan. 14.)

Journalism school teaches budding reporters to put data in terms that are easy to understand. Don’t just write “one part per million,” they say. Write that “it’s the equivalent of a shot glass of whiskey in a railroad tank car full of water.”

So when researchers described the “Great Garbage Patch” as an island of plastic twice the size of Texas, the news media — naturally — repeated the description.

Except it’s not true.  Read the full post>