Another Traveling Lie

By John Ballard

A lie can travel halfway around the world
while the truth is still putting its shoes on.

We saw this aphorism illustrated once again yesterday in the form of the claim that some two billion people watched the Royal Wedding. (And look, we have even been taught to capitalize those two pedestrian words when we use them as a pair.)

Via Twitter we find this "preposterous claim" is easily debunked by simple addition.
Credit goes to Hari Sreenivasan writing at PBS.

A culture minister for the British government said in early April that two billion people would watch the wedding of Prince William. Today, as if gospel, one media outlet after another after another repeated that claim with no additional sources of how that number could be justified. Let's do some back of the napkin math, shall we?

The global population as of 2009 was 6,775,235,700 as per the World Bank's World Development Indicators.

So if we are to believe this claim, that means more than one in four humans on earth watched the wedding. OK, let's say every man woman and child in Europe watched. According to the U.N., the European population is estimated to be roughly 732 million. Great - let's whip up the rest.

Can't you imagine the villagers in India and China and Latin America and Africa all clamoring together around a television, leaving their fields to till themselves -- yes yes, let's add 100 million from each. Great, let's raise that scoreboard up to almost 1.2 billion.

How about the traffic snarls as people stopped in their cars to watch big screens in city centers from Melbourne to Mumbai, let's go ahead and say another 500 million people watched that way - bringing our completely ludicrous total to 1.7 billion. Surely the U.S. can put us over the top right? We have a population of more than 300 million. Surely two out of every three people in the country watched right? That's another 200 million. I'm sure you woke up and watched ... didn't you? And don't leave out Canada - let's throw in all of their 34 million people.

So we did it, assuming every man, woman and child in Europe, 400 million villagers who were derelict in their duties, another 500 million who filled their respective Times Squares, the entire population of Canada and then the good old U S of A where two out of every three of us showed our pre-revolutionary colors: We've nearly reached 2 billion.

Seriously? Are we that enamored about creating spectacle, about creating fictitious records that break previously unsubstantiated ones? Do we really want that badly to have firsts, and mosts so much so we can take pleasure in saying - "I was there when" or is it simply a justification for this type of over-the-top coverage. The larger the unsubstantiated viewership, the easier it is to justify the satellite trucks and the hotel rooms?

Bringing us back to earth he concludes on a serious note.
Unfortunately, more readers will be distracted by TV ratings than paying attention to the more serious numbers with which he concludes.

I'm not disputing that it was of interest to many people, I'm not claiming that I know how many people watched in total, I'm just wondering what the rush is to trumpet a speculation as fact. We will see what the facts bear out in the days ahead.

According to the World Health Organization about 2.6 billion people lack an improved latrine, and 1.1 billion have no access to clean drinking water. Those seem to be estimates based on research, not speculation, and not marketing to promote an event. I feel comfortable reporting that because I consider the WHO a fairly credible source. I also think these facts are "newsworthy."

Someday perhaps as many people will pay as much attention to them as to a guest list, a wedding, a carriage, a kiss.