a placeless world

American journalists would have done this week well to reflect upon the Buddha's words.

"Believe nothing, O monks, merely because you have been told it… do not believe what your teacher tells you merely out of respect for the teacher."

The teacher, this week, was Amnesty International. The subject was racial profiling.

And the lesson, as reflected in the headlines, was grim:

"Racial profiling on the rise." -- NPR

"Human rights group says 32 million affected by racial profiling" -- The San Diego Union Tribune

"Profiling on the Rise, Rights Group Says" -- The Washington Post

"Washington's racial profiling law not enough" -- The Seattle Post-Intelligencer

And so on and so forth. From The Chicago Times and The San Francisco Chronicle. From news agency after news agency after news agency — more than 300 of them, by a Google News count — many of which published original stories based on Amnesty's findings.

And none of which seemed to find it important to review the data Amnesty used to draw its conclusions.

Even a cursory look at Amnesty's report would have revealed to the most half-witted of journalists that the well known human rights organization had used absurd extrapolations to arrive at its conclusions.

But Amnesty didn't include the report with its cookie-cutter press releases. And unless you had the audacity to ask for a copy of the report and the tenacity to review the published studies on which it was based, you wouldn't have known the truth.

The truth: Though Amnesty provided journalists a handy "estimate" of the number of people in each state who "reported" being victimized by racial profiling, it conducted no research in 45 states, instead choosing to hold five "congressional-style hearings" — in San Francisco, New York City, Chicago, Tulsa and Dallas.

What does New York City have in common with Salt Lake City? Tulsa with Tucson? San Francisco with Santa Fe?

Here's a better question: What do 229 people polled by the Kaiser Family Foundation in early 2001 have to say for the nation's entire population of Asians in 2004?

Well, about 25 of them reported feeling victimized — in one way or another — because of their race at some time in their life. That's 11 percent.

For Amnesty — and the hundreds of journalists who reported its findings — that was close enough to the concept of racial profiling.

For Amnesty — and the hundreds of journalists who reported its findings — that was close enough to assume that 11 percent of Asians in Texas have "reported" being racially profiled.

And 11 percent of Asians in Utah.

And in Vermont.

And in Kentucky.

Amnesty made similar estimates for blacks, Hispanics and — ready for this? — whites!

Yup. Whites. In a recent George Washington University survey of 1,792 people, 3 percent of white respondents reported that they felt they had been victims of racial profiling.

For Amnesty — and the hundreds of journalists who reported its findings — that was close enough to assume that 3 percent of whites in Florida have "reported" being racially profiled.

And in California.

And in Pennsylvania.

By Amnesty's estimate, white victims alone in those three states alone comprise 1.8 million victims of racial profiling.

One university statistician with whom I spoke called Amnesty's estimates "stupid, silly and insulting."

Which, he quickly pointed out, is not the same as saying that Amnesty's contentions about racial profiling are stupid, silly or insulting.

Indeed, civil rights activists across the United States generally agree that race-based policing has taken a turn for the worse since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. They say that turn has adversely affected Arab Americans — something Amnesty said was very clear from the testimony in its hearings.

Amnesty, of course, reported the problem as statistical fact. In fact — according to its own report — it did not specifically count Arabs in its report.

No matter to the journalists who wrote the next day's stories — nary a mention could be found of the fact that Amnesty had declined to survey the population it says is currently at greatest risk of being racially profiled.

In that Amnesty International is — in part — an organization dedicated to finding and reporting truth, it should be ashamed of the way it conducted its research and presented its findings.

But in that journalists are — in whole — supposed to be dedicated to the finding and reporting of truth, we should all feel humiliated.

Ultimately, both failures will have done a great disservice to the cause of anti-profiling activism. And that is the greatest failure of all.