Correlation Does Not Equal Causation, But It Does Equal Correlation

Stipulated: The Star Tribune is a de facto DFL PR firm. That its editorial slant is to the left is no surprise or problem.

Their “journalistic” slant, on the other hand? Democracy can not survive without institutions holding government accountable – and in Minnesota the ones ones you have are…

…(looks around)…

…PowerLine, AlphaNews, Tom Hauser on a good day, and the NARN.

Case in point: in a couple decades of reporting on sex trafficking cases, I do not recall the Star Tribune mentioning the occupations of the accused. Certainly not in the lede.

But now:

Talk about not so much burying the lede as inverting the story.

Is the Strib trying to tie Enbridge 3 – one of the DFL’s betes noire – to sex trafficking?

Given that the pipeline workers’ day jobs are paragraph 10 importance to the story, not headlines, waht do you think?

12 thoughts on “Correlation Does Not Equal Causation, But It Does Equal Correlation

  1. A sex trafficking sting that doesn’t catch any sex traffickers, never finds any exploited women at all, only snares a couple of johns looking to hire hookers, johns who happen to be pipeline workers, a pipeline the people running the sting oppose and who use the johns’ arrest for political gain: this is supposed to impress me?

    As a taxpayer, I wonder how much that bit of virtue signaling cost me?

  2. Sounds to me like a case of entrapment. I doubt if any of them propositioned any of the locals.

  3. JD touched on it, and it caught my eye. If the only thing that happened were potential johns being arrested, where was the “trafficking”? “Trafficking” implies the exploitation of (possibly underage) victims intended for sexual consumption whom were moved among various locations.

    Looks like the by-line writer took too many little blue pills and should call the doctor since his headline has experienced exaggeration lasting longer than 4 hours.

  4. I recall before the Super Bowl held here a few years ago the news rags were chock full of stories on “sex trafficking victims.” I thought they were talking about the Johns’ wives. Turned out they meant the hoes.

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  6. I couldn’t get through the Strib’s paywall, so I found the story at a Duluth newspaper site: https://www.duluthnewstribune.com/news/crime-and-courts/6901823-2-arrests-in-human-trafficking-sting-were-Line-3-workers

    Takeaways: Seven people were arrested in the sting. No actual sex-trafficing took place, other than the men being lured into traveling to the site of the sting.
    Only two of the seven men arrested were pipeline workers.
    Only the names and occupations of the arrested pipeline workers are given.
    Over 5,000 people work on the pipeline.
    The article appears to be a press release by native american groups opposed to the building of the pipeline.
    It should be child’s play for the Duluth News-Tribune to discover the names and occupations of all seven arrested individuals. They know the date and the place where the arrests occurred.

  7. MO: that would imply that they are journalists and reporters, not DFL PR mechanisms.

    Similar to when the left hated SUVs. Every story about a car crash involving an SUV, made sure to note it was an SUV. If it was any kind of car or pickup truck, it was a vehicle. And it still happens to this day, even though the anti-SUV movement seems to have given up. So it is now baked into their publishing genes.

  8. It certainly was not a balanced story. Any time you bring in 5,000 new workers, no matter their occupation or sex, you are going to see an increase in crime. The point is — do the benefits exceed the costs? That is a public policy decision.
    Whenever anyone complains about an illegal immigrant sex traiicker, drunk-driving and killing someone, or robing or raping someone, the “journaiists” go out of there way to explain how these crimes are not representative of the population of illegals as a whole.

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