Dave 
12, DecemberI once read an excellent book called A Short Course in Intellectual Self-Defense whose main focus was discussing propaganda and influence. The word “propaganda” itself has (at least in my mind) connotations of conspiracies and paranoia, but that’s not what I’m talking about here. The definition of propaganda that I’m considering here is the following:
the spreading of ideas, information, or rumour for the purpose of helping or injuring an institution, a cause, or a person
– Merriam-Webster Online
Propaganda in this form is all around us. Corporations use it to try and convince us that their brand is “5 times better than the leading brand.” Governments use it in attempts to inform the public and create awareness of causes or issues. This article aims to reiterate some of the lessons from the book with a particular case study that hits close to home for Torontonians: TTC salaries. Before delving in to this topic, however, allow me this small disclaimer: I am not justifying TTC salaries with my argument. I am simply trying to bring to light the fact that information can (and often is) misrepresented to further a cause or make a point. I hope that you take from this article a better understanding of analyzing information and coming to your own conclusions independently.
Here is our case study: http://kromagg.org/TTC_Salaries.htm
Take a moment to read through this full page and come to a conclusion about it. Think particularly about what its trying to say about TTC salaries, and what position it takes. Continue reading once you’ve done this.
Welcome back! So, what did you think? The page starts off by listing the names, positions, salaries and taxable benefits of 548 TTC employees, then lists its sources at the bottom and some statistics about the table, as well as average salaries of health care workers for comparison. What is it saying? I’m not absolutely sure of the author’s intentions, but I think its safe to say that this page is implying that TTC workers (with an average salary of around $113,000!) make a lot more money than nurses, doctors, and other health care workers. How can that be? Why would transit employees make more than doctors?
Our first indication of misrepresentation of facts is that there are only 548 people listed here. Surely the TTC employs more people than that to transport thousands of people daily! According to the TTC’s website, it employs “more than 11,000″ people¹. It is apparent, just by thinking about this, that the sample size of the page is fairly small. How small? Well, let’s calculate the percentage.
(548 ÷ 11,000) × 100
This is a percentage calculation. What do you get? I get 4.98. This calculation, of course, assumes the TTC employs exactly 11,000 people. 4.98 is a percentage, meaning 548 is 4.98% of 11,000. This list of salaries represents only 4.98% of the TTC’s workforce. The next question you could ask is, what portion of the workforce does this represent? The highest paid? The lowest paid? Somewhere in the middle? A bit of investigating gives us our answer. Click on the link in the page next to “Source: Public Sector Salary Disclosure 2009″ (link provided here for ease).
This page, on the Government of Ontario’s website, links to various government reports from 2008. It clearly states, in the first or second paragraph:
The Public Sector Salary Disclosure Act requires organizations that receive public funding from the Province of Ontario to disclose annually the names, positions, salaries and total taxable benefits of employees paid $100,000 or more in a calendar year.
Indeed, this law requires publicly funded organizations to disclose information about employees who are paid more than $100,000 or more per year. What does this mean? The TTC employees listed on this page are the highest paid ones, representing only 5% of the TTC’s workforce. The other 95% makes less than $100,000 per year. This essentially renders the statistics on the page pointless. What is the point in saying that the average salary of the top 5% paid TTC employees is $113,000? We could go in to further detail by spending some time researching to find out the actual average salary, but I’ll let it at that. Perhaps I can dive in to that in another article.
As for the health care comparisons, they too are bogus. As the saying goes, it’s apples and oranges. It compares the average income of all health care workers across the country with the highest paid TTC workers. Not to mention that the health care professional income statistics are from 8 years prior. I think its reasonable to assume that health care salaries have risen since 2000 to account for inflation and the rising cost of living.
As you can see, information can be misrepresented to create false implications. This may be done intentionally, but it may also be done unintentionally. I am not trying to accuse the author of that page (whoever it may be) of falsifying information. It is entirely possible that he or she feels strongly about transit spending and jumped to conclusions when they were presented with this information, and created this page without proper analysis.
One could argue that my article in itself is propaganda. Indeed, I wrote it with the intention of influencing you, the reader. I will be the first to admit to this accusation. I will also clearly state my intention, which is to influence you to believe that careful analysis of information is vital if we want our decisions and opinions on matters such as transit spending to be based on facts and not hearsay, anecdotes or misrepresented information. It took me only 5 minutes to read the source of the information and find that it is indeed inaccurate.
¹ http://www3.ttc.ca/About_the_TTC/Operating_Statistics/2008.jsp under “Key Facts”