MMMM # 453 -- An unfair Miss USA Question? TIME is out. And a Lack of Clear Execution(s)

    Does The Miss USA Contest even deserve to be part of an MMMM? I'll argue yes since there were legitimate news topics used to question the contestants. Whoever wrote last night's questions did a truly unfair job. I'll add a transcript to this posting when I locate it in the morning, but the one about the recent release of four Taliban prisoners in Guantanamo was terribly confusing and unfair to Miss Louisiana, who was a front runner, but fell from grace after her answer.

Here's the Q&A:

MSNBC HOST THOMAS ROBERTS, EMCEE: And we have judge number four, Ian Ziering. Your question, please.

IAN ZIERING: In recent weeks the U.S. has released five detainees from Guantanamo in exchange for one U.S. soldier held captive in Afghanistan. The U.S. policy is to leave no soldier behind. Do you think its fair to sacrifice or swap lives in order to uphold this policy?

(WHAT? Swap what lives?  What is he talking about?)

Her response: "I am glad that we got our guy back. However, I do not feel it is right that we subject ourself to these acts of terrorism. I do agree with our guy being back but, however, I do not think that we should subject ourselves."

(WHAT???)

Anyway, I promise this is the last time we'll refer to a beauty pageant in the MMMM.
I think. 

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 The NY Times (paywall) reports TIME Magazine will go on it's own today, once a crown jewel of the media, now being evicted from the prestigious Time-Life Building and spun off to humbler quarters downtown. Will it survive alone?

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     Journalists try to include perspective in their stories...to connect the dots and help the audience understand the significance or an event or a comment. And that's especially true with statistics.

A Sunday story at al.com in March ranked Alabama as 6th in the nation when it comes to executions performed since 1977. It ranks Texas number one....though the numbers from the Death Penalty Information Website indicated Texas is #2)

But using the raw number of executions doesn't tell the whole story. The population of the states is also a factor, which is why stories most often report per-capita stats. 

Alabama is ranked 23 in population. Texas is 2nd.
Alabama executed 56 prisoners in those years, Texas 512.
Using the per capita system would move the two states closer to the same number of executions per 10,000 people.

Alabama = 0.111

Texas = 0.188

[The MMMM, a regular feature of www.TimLennox.com, is kinda on vacation this week....the death penalty item above was written in March when the story came out, but remained a draft...till now.]