Hot, Wet Death From Above! TV Globo on Consumer Risk

The first time I saw a Brazilian electric showerhead, every instinct in my gringo body shouted that this was an insane idea, and I ask my wife, “How many people does this thing kill every year in Brazil?” “Good question,” she replied. “I have no idea.” It is a question that would be interesting to know the answer to, is hard to find good sources on, and is a question that this Globo report on the death-dealing electric showerhead does not even bother attempting to answer. It is good enough to parrot the statement that “your electric showerhead COULD kill you.”

Which I think tends to corroborate what I always says: The contrary-to-fact conditional is the first refuge of an intellectually lazy, useless journalist.

Because my instincts were apparently off. We just had our local electrician in yesterday, in fact, to inspect our electric showerhead, and he gave me a very good “for dummies” rundown on the thing.

Mino Carta likes to say that Brazilian journalism, and especially Brazilian TV journalism, was among the very worst in the world. Just quackingly and abusively bad.

But surely the man was exaggerating? I thought. Shrill exaggeration for effect being something of a national sport.

But I have been testing the latter proposition in the NMM fact-checking and signal-to-noise measurement labs for several years now, and I have to say, the Carta Hypothesis is looking more and more probable.

Because when I say that TV Globo is viciously slanted and viciously stupid, I mean that it is viciously slanted and viciously stupid as a general rule, to the point where it is hard not to conclude that its vicious, slanted stupidity is a praxis deriving from a systematic Weltaunschauung. A method in its madness.

This, I think, is another case in point: a textbook case of how NOT to report a risk story to the general public.