The Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics released a compilation of health, economics, and education data Friday about the 70.4 million children who reside in the United States. Even with an easily decipherable report compiled with information from numerous government agencies, The Washington Post managed to manipulate the findings to fit their liberal agenda.

The report, "America's Children: Key National Indicators of Well-Being 2002," highlighted the latest trends in teen pregnancy, infant death rate, smoking, health insurance coverage, reading and nutrition. The Washington Post misrepresented the report's findings through misleading statements that suggested the report was a comparative study of issues related to children of different racial and ethnic backgrounds. Although the study did include specific facts and comparisons about how teen pregnancy and other rates differ amongst different ethnic groups, the overall report was not an immigrant, race or minority study as implied by The Washington Post article.

The headline in the July 12th Washington Post, "Study notes more children with immigrant parents: Federal report cites health, education concerns" contrasted sharply with the headline for an Associated Press article published in The San Francisco Chronicle, and for an article written in The Washington Times. The AP headline, "Some good news for American children: Fewer babies dying, fewer teens having babies" and The Washington Times headline, "Lot of U.S. children improves over time," both more accurately portray the findings of the report.

Although it referred to the report as "a generally rosy portrait of American youth," The Washington Post article did not present a complete picture of the facts. While the AP and The Washington Times articles both began with balanced conclusions drawn from the annual report, a statistic and a deceptive blanket statement set the tone of The Washington Post piece. The Post reported, "nearly 1 in 5 children live with at least one parent who was born outside of the United States, and they are much more likely to live below the poverty line and have other risk factors for ill health and poor educational development." The actual report, however, states that foreign-born children with foreign-born parents are more likely than native children with foreign-born parents to live below the poverty level. Period. It is unethical to take a statistic from one part of a report and then use it to bring weight to an exaggerated, ambiguous statement to make a biased point.

In its discussion of children's health insurance coverage, The Post article reported, "Hispanic children were more likely to be among the 8.4 million children with no health insurance." But the writer neglected to mention that according to the report, 75 percent of Hispanic children do have health insurance. Both of these statistics are presumably accurate, yet one statistic sounds so much worse than the other. The Post used a vague statistic to make a point, yet did not provide the reader with the context. The AP story reported that in 2000, 88 percent of children were covered by health insurance. It said that officials credit this high percentage to a "new State Children's Health Insurance Program, which covers children in working poor families." The Post made no mention of the health coverage support received by some families. Information about such financial backing would have run counter to the slant taken in the Post article.

And the bias didn't end with how the statistics were reported. The quotes printed in The Washington Post article greatly differed from those in The Washington Times and the AP stories. The Times and the AP both included quotes from Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson, and from Dr. Duane Alexander, director of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. Their comments reflected broad-scale conclusions drawn from the report about children's health, the low infant death rate, and the importance of providing children with good opportunities. Quotes in The Washington Post, however, were mainly specific to diversity and poverty, and were attributed to Nancy Gordon, the associate director for demographic programs at the U.S. Census Bureau, and Edward Sondik, director of the National Center for Health Statistics. Gordon commented on how children with a foreign-born parent will need more help to be successful as adults, and Sondik pointed to a gap between well-off youth, and those who are poor, nonwhite, or have uneducated parents. He also talked made some correlations between poverty and health. Comments from Thompson and Alexander did not appear in The Washington Post article, and Gordon and Sondik's remarks did not appear in either of the other two news pieces. While every news article about a given topic does not need to quote the same sources, it is interesting to recognize which sources are used and how just the right quote can support a newspaper or writer's specific agenda.

The Washington Post did a disservice to readers by providing them with a skewed impression of this federal report. Anyone can review the study, which included statistics and information about family characteristics, population, education, economic security, health, and social environment and behavior. Yes, the report included information about children with immigrant parents. However, the significant emphasis The Post placed on this aspect of the study gave people a distorted and inaccurate view of the report's findings and broad-scale conclusions.

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