The general problem with this kind of criticism is that it can be leveled at any article citing a statistic.
No matter what value an article chooses to highlight they could have highlighted a different one. True... but so what?
Here I guess the root of your objection is that the article seems to conflate the ocean-sides with the entire ocean. That's fair: the article is really about ocean sides, but in a few places it refers generally to the ocean. It appears to be purposeful, too, since it's in the headline and lede while the rest of article is straight. Still, that the headline and lede is overly strong is, unfortunately, almost a universally applicable criticism these days. Headlines and ledes are written for attention-grabbing not accuracy. That's a problem not of individual articles, but of a system that lives on click-through.
A less superficial criticism would be to examine the degree to which the main point of the article -- that cigarette butt pollution is a problem that should be addressed -- is fair, or whether it's making this out to be a significantly more substantial problem than it really is. (Remember, the context here is activism to reduce pollution, where there was recently a lot of focus and traction on plastic drinking straws, for which there was some backlash, with people arguing that there was a lot of focus on a tiny part of the problem. So a really good question here is, is this just more plastic straw BS or is there a really issue here?)
And keep in mind that if cigarette butts are a coastal pollution problem it doesn't mean something else, like fishing nets in the ocean, isn't a problem.
>The general problem with this kind of criticism is that it can be leveled at any article citing a statistic.
Only if it cites a badly done statistic or misleads as to the statistic's conclusions, as this article does.
>No matter what value an article chooses to highlight they could have highlighted a different one. True... but so what?*
That's not the accusation here. It's that what they chose to highlight is not the most important pollutant of oceans by any reasonable metric. The purpose of citing a statistic in the first place is to consider things in their respective relevance.
Now, restricting this to the ocean side (which the article editors should have done already in their chosen title), it doesn't seem to be such a problem either (and I'm from a country where most smoke and has tons of beaches).
No matter what value an article chooses to highlight they could have highlighted a different one. True... but so what?
Here I guess the root of your objection is that the article seems to conflate the ocean-sides with the entire ocean. That's fair: the article is really about ocean sides, but in a few places it refers generally to the ocean. It appears to be purposeful, too, since it's in the headline and lede while the rest of article is straight. Still, that the headline and lede is overly strong is, unfortunately, almost a universally applicable criticism these days. Headlines and ledes are written for attention-grabbing not accuracy. That's a problem not of individual articles, but of a system that lives on click-through.
A less superficial criticism would be to examine the degree to which the main point of the article -- that cigarette butt pollution is a problem that should be addressed -- is fair, or whether it's making this out to be a significantly more substantial problem than it really is. (Remember, the context here is activism to reduce pollution, where there was recently a lot of focus and traction on plastic drinking straws, for which there was some backlash, with people arguing that there was a lot of focus on a tiny part of the problem. So a really good question here is, is this just more plastic straw BS or is there a really issue here?)
And keep in mind that if cigarette butts are a coastal pollution problem it doesn't mean something else, like fishing nets in the ocean, isn't a problem.