Exactly. A statistically literate person should be able to make reasonably accurate inferences about the broader distribution of some event class by reading ab

Exactly. A statistically literate person should be able to make reasonably accurate inferences about the broader distribution of some event class by reading about the most newsworthy events and extrapolating (taking into account that newsworthy events should be among the highest-impact in the class). However, practically all mainstream news sources fail this basic test. You can't get very close to an accurate picture of reality these days without reading e.g. individual bloggers who dedicate a significant portion of their lives to highlighting relevant patterns that mainstream news sources on both 'sides' are intentionally omitting or burying.