© IE Online Media Services Pvt Ltd
Tags:
Journalism of Courage
If $500 million is spent on 327 million citizens, would each get $1 million or a little more than $1?
This rather simple mathematical question landed two United States journalists in a painfully embarrassing situation as they were left scratching their heads.
Brian Williams and Mara Gay made a gaffe while discussing a tweet on the whopping $500 million spent by US presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg on his election campaign live on air.
“Bloomberg spent $500 million on ads. The US population is 327 million. He could have given each American $1 million and still have money left over. I feel like a $1 million check would be life-changing for most people. Yet he wasted it all on ads and STILL LOST,” writer Mekita Rivas had tweeted on Super Tuesday. (Rivas has since made her Twitter account private.)
While discussing Rivas’ social media post, Williams and Gay agreed with the tweet which claimed each citizen would get $1 million. But in reality, the actual amount would be around a paltry $1.50 each.
It’s true that Bloomberg spent $500 million on political advertisements before dropping out of the presidential race, and it is equally true that according to the latest census, the US has a population of approximately 327 million people.
https://twitter.com/iamscottenglish/status/1235806244817915904
The mistake was soon rectified by the journalists and the media house, but it was too late. The clip had by then already gone viral, leaving netizens laughing out loud. It had over 10 million views at the time of writing this.
Williams, an MSNBC anchor, later said, “Turns out Mara and I got the same grades at math… I’m speaking of the tweet we both misinterpreted. He could give each American a dollar. The tweet is wrong.”
The network, too, issued an apology on Twitter regretting the error.
Gay, a member of the New York Times editorial board, also tweeted about the gaffe, saying she was “buying a calculator, brb.”
Most people were baffled by the ‘math problem’ and some wondered how it even aired. Some school teachers said even those in the fourth grade would have gotten the calculation correct.
https://twitter.com/KFILE/status/1235808311834021888
https://twitter.com/rameswaram/status/1235922599810674689
https://twitter.com/theneedledrop/status/1235941662968463362
https://twitter.com/Yair_Rosenberg/status/1235913827834892289
https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1235890340047052800
https://twitter.com/MsDTeachMe/status/1235931201057230852
https://twitter.com/PentUpPower/status/1235868298463461376
https://twitter.com/ChantalTip/status/1235833662584713216
https://twitter.com/jehlpxyz/status/1235859082659037188
There were few who came to their defence, saying they too struggled to understand what went wrong. “You can laugh at them but they’re right; Mike Bloomberg should give everyone a million dollars,” one user said, while another joked that they would still like their $1.5 from Bloomberg.
https://twitter.com/shaunking/status/1235931231881134080
https://twitter.com/EricaLG/status/1235995276713828353
https://twitter.com/jseglin/status/1235931441042575363
https://twitter.com/RegressiveElf/status/1235832775527133184
https://twitter.com/Profiterole2/status/1235952153300172801
The person behind the original tweet made her account private following the gaffe and updated her Twitter bio to read, “I know, I’m bad at math.”
Michael Bloomberg, 78, dropped out of the 2020 presidential race on Wednesday and said he would back fellow moderate Joe Biden in his bid to win the Democratic nomination to challenge Republican President Donald Trump in November’s election.
