Reuters Drinking From The Same Misinformation Bottle As Wine Sellers
from the try,-try-again dept
Two weeks ago, we pointed to a study that made it clear that, despite warnings from local wine merchants who were afraid of competition from online retailers, kids were not buying very much wine online. The wine sellers' industry organization couldn't accept that, of course, and tried to spin the story to suggest that kids buying wine online had become a huge issue. Luckily, Carl Bialik at the Wall Street Journal went through and debunked the conclusions the wine sellers were pitching -- even getting the research firm that did the study to admit that the claims of the wine sellers were not consistent with what the study actually said. Of course, not all news publications are as thorough as the WSJ in looking at such claims. Some like to simply take the press releases of various organizations, add a few quotes and run them as news. It appears that's exactly what Reuters has done, basically taking the wine sellers' word, and running a fear-mongering report about kids buying alcohol online, entitled "Point-click-drink: It's that easy for teens." It'll attract plenty of attention, of course. Too bad it isn't particularly accurate.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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Fagins
If you want to make a common-sense argument against online hazards, there are also common-sense arguments for it.
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Re: Fagins
Common-sense says wait and see. And we did. And it's not a problem.
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I don't get it
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What was the margin of error?
"Conducted in 2006 by Teenage Research Unlimited, the survey of a nationally representative sample of 1,001 young people between the ages of 14 and 20 years revealed that 2 percent (representing 551,000 nationally) reported having personally bought alcohol online."
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Re: What was the margin of error?
Alternatively, one could use a Poisson regression to determine whether the availability of online purchases increases the quantity of alcohol consumption among all teens.
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Re: Re: What was the margin of error?
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WINE? come on...
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Get it how you can
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nobody notices packaging?
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RE: #9 by Anonymous Coward
Had friend in high school who looked mid to late 20's, he always bought the drinks, never carded, until his senior year. He asked the guy why he had never been carded before, the clerk just smiled and said "You never used to wear a class ring."
As for the article above, you would think someone would take the time to at least search something out on the Internet before running a story. Specially if you get the story elsewhere, just to make sure it is credible.
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Wine Wine Wine
Hey I used to sneak into bars. Once you're in they never card you for drinks. My trick was go before they start carding. Most of my local bars don't have anyone at the door till 10:30 when people really start showing up and anyone could walk in before that.
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sign for it
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Good ol' Oz
Other than that, I had a lot of older friends who would drive down to the liquor store and get us whatever we paid for.
I don't drink much now though, maybe a half dozen times a year - depending on who I am with, and hardly ever to excess.
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