Legal Times: Numbers Game: Gonzales Launches DOJ Project Safe Childhood With Mysterious Figure. (NBC News correspondent Chris) Hansen’s source, according to the “Dateline” report: unnamed “law enforcement officials.” Asked who those law enforcement officials were, Hansen told Legal Times that “this is a number that was widely used in law enforcement circles,” though he couldn’t specify by whom or where.
As NBC News continues to embarrass itself with its Dateline “predator” series — including unethical payments for help in pulling off stings — now it turns out that the network is basing a key baseline statistic on hocus-pocus.
But hey, ratings are everything. Who cares about accuracy in today’s TV journalism world, anyway?