Assignment task:
Here's how the two pundits came to such dramatically different conclusions: Kristof was citing an analysis by ProPublica, which combed through the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Supplementary Homicide Report. The site reported: "The 1,217 deadly police shootings from 2010 to 2012 captured in the federal data show that blacks, age 15 to 19, were killed at a rate of 31.17 per million, while just 1.47 per million white males in that age range died at the hands of police." What's key is that ProPublica narrowed the scope of its analysis to the 15-to-19 age range, and adjusted for population differences to account for the fact that more whites live in the United States than blacks - both key differences from O'Reilly's approach. The Fox News host's numbers, meanwhile, came from a fatal injury database maintained by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A search in 2012 for deaths caused by "legal intervention" as a result of the use of a firearm - that is, a police shooting - yields just the numbers O'Reilly cited Monday night. In the 15-19 age range, the database shows 20 white people killed in 2012 and 14 blacks.