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The Media Marketplace for Garbled Demography

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  • Michael S. Teitelbaum

Abstract

Differences in cultural norms and incentives provide a powerful marketplace for garbled demography in the mass media. Journalists are attracted to expectation of dramatic shifts in politically and socially controversial domains that can result from long‐term population projections. Demographers routinely caution against interpreting such projections as forecasts, and emphasize the complexities and uncertainties of demographic analyses. Yet such caveats are often lost in the sequence of translations from demographic study, to press release, to journalistic treatment. In addition, advocacy groups often interpret such stories to serve their own interests, while headlines and article titles designed for general readerships are another source of miscommunication about demographic studies. Two recent cases offer object lessons of how careful demographic analyses addressing politically controversial trends can suffer from such confusions: media coverage of the 1997 National Research Council report entitled The New Americans, and the 2000 report by the United Nations Population Division entitled Replacement Migration: Is It a Solution to Declining and Ageing Populations? The essay suggests procedural changes that might moderate the level of garbled reporting and commentary that commonly characterize coverage of such studies in the mass media.

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  • Michael S. Teitelbaum, 2004. "The Media Marketplace for Garbled Demography," Population and Development Review, The Population Council, Inc., vol. 30(2), pages 317-327, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:popdev:v:30:y:2004:i:2:p:317-327
    DOI: 10.1111/j.1728-4457.2004.015_1.x
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    Cited by:

    1. Michael S. Teitelbaum, 2014. "Political demography: Powerful forces between disciplinary stools," International Area Studies Review, Center for International Area Studies, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, vol. 17(2), pages 99-119, June.
    2. David A. Coleman, 2007. "Demographic diversity and the ethnic consequences of immigration - key issues that the Commission's report left out," Vienna Yearbook of Population Research, Vienna Institute of Demography (VID) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna, vol. 5(1), pages 5-12.
    3. Katerina Georgiadis, 2011. "Fertile Debates: A Comparative Account of Low Fertility in the British and Greek National Press [Des débats féconds: analyse comparative de la prise en compte des faibles fécondités dans les presse," European Journal of Population, Springer;European Association for Population Studies, vol. 27(2), pages 243-262, May.
    4. Daniela Craveiro & Isabel Tiago de Oliveira & Maria Cristina Sousa Gomes & Jorge Malheiros & Maria João Guardado Moreira & João Peixoto, 2019. "Back to replacement migration: A new European perspective applying the prospective-age concept," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 40(45), pages 1323-1344.
    5. Alin Ceobanu & Tanya Koropeckyj-Cox, 2013. "Should International Migration Be Encouraged to Offset Population Aging? A Cross-Country Analysis of Public Attitudes in Europe," Population Research and Policy Review, Springer;Southern Demographic Association (SDA), vol. 32(2), pages 261-284, April.
    6. Eileen Díaz McConnell & Michael Rodríguez-Muñiz, 2023. "Exploring Popular Sentiments of U.S. Ethnoracial Demographic Change: A Research Brief," Population Research and Policy Review, Springer;Southern Demographic Association (SDA), vol. 42(6), pages 1-14, December.

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