MSM gender asymmetry reporting

Putting together different news reports seen or remembered a few minutes apart perfectly illustrate an idea Ann Althouse has discussed a few times. She has observed that mainstream news media packaging of information seems disproportionately to use its relevance to women as the framing. Regardless of the absolute base. If average salaries rise by 5% in a year but they rise 5.5% for men and 4.5% for women, then the article is not about the healthy rise in wages but in the increasing salary gap. If nursing goes from 95% female, 5% male to 90:10 in a decade, the article will not be about a slow evolution towards gender equity in the profession. It will be about the threat posed by male nurses to women's jobs.

When she first mentioned this some years ago, it struck me as an amusing observation but unlikely to be statistically significant. But, as happens sometimes, once you are primed, you begin to see it everywhere. I still suspect that it is more an occasional phenomenon, not a material effect. But it sure is an annoying ideological tic when you see it.

First example: There is a new study out showing that deaths from alcohol are rising markedly for men and women. How big a deal is that?

From National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism:

An estimated 88,0005 people (approximately 62,000 men and 26,000 women) die from alcohol-related causes annually, making alcohol the third leading preventable cause of death in the United States. The first is tobacco, and the second is poor diet and physical inactivity.

88,000 deaths is significant.

Two and a half times as many men death of alcohol each year as women. So how does the New York Times headline its article?
Alcohol Deaths Have Risen Sharply, Particularly Among Women. Using numbers from the new report:

The number of women drinking dangerous amounts of alcohol is rising sharply in the United States.

That finding was among several troubling conclusions in an analysis of death certificates published Friday by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. The analysis looked at deaths nationwide each year from 1999 through 2017 that were reported as being caused at least partly by alcohol, including acute overdose, its chronic use, or in combination with other drugs.

The death rate tied to alcohol rose 51 percent overall in that time period, taking into account population growth. Most noteworthy to researchers was that the rate of deaths among women rose much more sharply, up 85 percent. In sheer numbers, 18,072 women died from alcohol in 2017, according to death certificates, compared with 7,662 in 1999.

“More women are drinking and they are drinking more,” said Patricia Powell, deputy director of the alcohol institute, which is a division of the National Institutes of Health.

Still, far more men than women die from alcohol-related illnesses, the study showed. In 2017, alcohol played a role in the deaths of 72,558 men, compared to 35,914 in 1999, a 35 percent increase when population growth is factored in.

They are factually correct throughout. The rest of the article meanders without conclusion around why the rate might be increasing disproportionately for women. There is no discussion about why men die of alcohol at twice the rate as women. Seems like an omission. Feels like the NYT is much more concerned about a possible future danger to women than it is about an actual current danger to men now.

Second example: Some time in the past week or so, there was a report out about the surprising drop in cancer deaths of 2.2% in just the past year. In one of the MSM accounts, they framed their article around the fact that rate of decline for women was less than that for men even though men die of cancer 40% more frequently than women. The population adjusted death rate from cancer for men in 2019 is only now approaching the death rate of women from cancer in 1950.

Third example: Similarly, three or four years ago, there was an article in the New York Times, U.S. Suicide Rate Surges to a 30-Year High by Sabrina Tavernise. Men are about 75-80% of all suicides. How did the New York Times frame their reporting?

Suicide in the United States has surged to the highest levels in nearly 30 years, a federal data analysis has found, with increases in every age group except older adults. The rise was particularly steep for women. It was also substantial among middle-aged Americans, sending a signal of deep anguish from a group whose suicide rates had been stable or falling since the 1950s.

The suicide rate for middle-aged women, ages 45 to 64, jumped by 63 percent over the period of the study, while it rose by 43 percent for men in that age range, the sharpest increase for males of any age. The overall suicide rate rose by 24 percent from 1999 to 2014, according to the National Center for Health Statistics, which released the study on Friday.

[snip]

Researchers also found an alarming increase among girls 10 to 14, whose suicide rate, while still very low, had tripled. The number of girls who killed themselves rose to 150 in 2014 from 50 in 1999. “This one certainly jumped out,” said Sally Curtin, a statistician at the center and an author of the report.

I remember at the time scratching my head with the curious chart they used to accompany the article.

Click to enlarge.

The heading was, "A Growing, Widespread Toll - From 1999 to 2014, suicide rates in the United States rose among most age groups. Men and women from 45 to 64 had a sharp increase. Rates fell among those age 75 and older." I stared at it trying to figure whether this was four graphs and they missed one in the top left quadrant or what. Finally realized that it was two graphs, women on the left and men on the right. Its just that the suicide rates are so low for women that it only looks like they are missing data.

Once you look for the Althouse gender discrepancy problem, you see it with some frequency. I don't think it is a material bias, but certainly is an annoying and persistent one.