Misleading Numbers in News Stories

I am the first to admit that math and I do not get along. When we took our pretest on the first day of class and I came across the math section...well, I didn't even know where to start. And while looking for an article for this blog assignment.... well, I still didn't even know where to start.

After looking through many newspaper search engines and not really thinking any of the stories had bad numbers, I've really learned what I need to work on. And what I need to work on is learning the basics of many different topics (even if I'm not interested in the topic) so I know if the numbers look suspicious. I don't know what is too big or too small when it comes to deaths in Iraq or the number of illegal immigrants in the country. And if I ever want to be in the business, I should know these things.

However, I did come across a man who does. John Allen Paulos is the "Who's Counting" writer at ABC news and his story called Misleading Numbers in the News was very informational to me. Paulos focuses on three topics regularly focused on in the news: social security, illegal immigration and the number of Iraqi civilians killed.

Paulos first focuses on social security:

One can find a few stories noting that the 6.2 percent of the average American's taxable income that goes to Social Security taxes will be cut to 4.2 percent. That's a 2 percentage point cut -- not a 2 percent cut, but a 32 percent cut! This will leave a huge hole in Social Security revenues for present retirees. Why isn't the proposal fairly described as calling for a 32 percent cut in individuals' contributions? I suspect it's because most reporters don't feel confident enough of their basic arithmetic to so describe it.

That sounds similar to my math problems and it seems that many other reporters feel the same way.

Paulos also points out that Time magazine claimed 3 million illegal immigrants were attempting to cross into U.S. every year, and this statistic has been accepted by other new organizations with no questions asked. However, border patrol says they apprehend around 1 million a year and they estimate 3 times that number actually attempt to get across the border.

Paulos points out:

And the factor of three mentioned by border agents is just conjecture. How does one estimate how many people are not apprehended when these latter are, almost by definition, largely invisible? Whatever the real statistic, the 3 million figure has by now attained a life of its own.

The most complicated and misleading numbers are associated with Iraqi civilian deaths during the war. The two most popular studies used in news stories on this topic have been by Les Roberts of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and by Iraq Body Count (IBC). Roberts’s claims the deaths could be as high as 100,000 where IBC claims the deaths level out to about 15,000. That is a huge difference, but both are being used in news stories. So a loyal reader of both the Chicago Tribune and the New York Times may first read that civilian deaths are around 15,000 and then read they are around 100,000. And we wonder why people don't trust the news!

I know numbers are hard to figure out for someone with a journalism degree; but, with just a couple clicks of the mouse, I think we could easily find out whether our statistics are misleading or accurate.

The Seven Deadly Sins of Copy Editing!

I searched the World Wide Web up and down (well...for around 15 minutes) and could not find a really good story about Journalism to write about. I knew they had to be some out there, but I was feeling lazy. Then a wonderful thought came to me! Our lecture professor uses a lot of Poynter Online articles to get her point across, so I checked there. It was on this website I came across the article, "The Seven Deadly Copy Editing Sins".

This article resonates with what we are learning in our lecture and lab class. Editor Anne Glover pins down seven sins many copy editors make:

1. Arrogance: This means don't believe that what you say is final and always correct.

2. Assumption: Do not assume that a reporter did the correct math or wrote down the right address. Always check the facts.

3. Sloppiness: This basically means don't make stupid mistakes, like "a jumpline that refers the readers to the wrong page".

4. Indifference: It's easy to treat the story you are reading as just a story you have to spell check, but this kind of thought-process is risky. It causes every page to look the same and for headlines to become boring. Pretend the story is YOUR story and have a little pride what you do to make it better.

5. Ignorance: This means always fact-checking and making sure everything is correct. Ignorance is writing the wrong date in reference to the end of WWI because you didn't feel the need to fact check. Glover says "Readers always know these things, and you damage the newspaper's credibility when you show you don't".

6. Laziness: This sin goes along with ignorance. Human being wants to do whatever is the easiest, and that can be anything from not looking up a word in the stylebook because its two rooms away or "not bothering to teaser something because you couldn't find out what page it was on".

7. Inflexibility: Yes, it sucks when a huge story hits after you already finished designing and editing the front page. But remember what your REAL job is: getting the news out to the people. You may have pull an all-nighter, but the end result will be worth it.

***These mistakes are very obvious, but if you really think about your life as a Journalism student, you know that you have at least contemplated these options quite a few times in your short career. For me, laziness hits the hardest. No one wants to search the web for good articles for an hour, ergo I'm sure no editor wants to spend hours upon hours making sure one story is precise. But considering how the public views the media nowadays, this is the most opportune and important time to make sure every minute detail has been examined carefully.

Therefore, I think this article is something any aspiring copy editor or writer should have linked in their "favorites" folder in their web browser. If they can look down the list and can honestly say they did not commit one copy editing sin while looking at the story they are editing, the story is probably ready for the public to read.

Outsourcing editing jobs..."How About No"

I am sure the majority of the class and I share the same opinion when it comes to outsourcing news editing jobs.

I understand that newspapers are losing business and money rather quickly, but I do not think outsourcing is going to help the matter.

As many of us have seen in numerous polls, readers are not content with how the media is reporting news. Just to reiterate my point , "The Pew Research Center of the People and the Press" recorded their findings on their website:

Just 42% say news organizations generally "stand up for America;" about as many (40%) believe that news organizations are "too critical of America." That represents a significant shift since July 2003, when a narrow majority (51%) said that news organizations stand up for America, while 33% said they were too critical.Other measures assessing the basic values of the press also have become more negative. Six-in-ten see news organizations as politically biased, up from 53% two years ago. More than seven-in-ten (72%) say news organizations tend to favor one side, rather than treat all sides fairly; that is the largest number ever expressing that view.

This is the real problem. And how would outsourcing editing jobs fix this? That's right...it can't!

The writer of the article, John McIntyre, states this exact opinion. He points out that if editing was only fixing spelling and grammar errors, then perhaps it may be a good idea. But editing is MUCH more than a glorified spell check. It is fact checking, and people whom have never set foot in the United States are going to have a hard time making sure all the facts are correct.

More factual mistakes will happen if outsourcing happens and readers will be even more distrustful of what they read. Outsourcing may bring down financial costs at first, but in the long run it will cost newspapers their readers and their fantastic local editors.

God knows I am one of the writers that needs an editor assisting me whenever possible. And I'd rather have us living in the same town, instead of 3,000 miles away.

News Editing...A Dying Profession?

News Editing seems like it would be one of the most important positions at a news publication, right? You always will need people to check the facts, the grammar and anything else a writer might have screwed up on. However, by looking at headlines and news stories at the start of every class in Journalism 420, I have learned that many mistakes still make it to print. So perhaps newspapers like the News Gazette have all ready made some cuts we'd never thought were so desperately required in order to survive the tough newspaper business.

Alan D. Mutter, a former City Editor of the Chicago Sun-Times, has blogged about this problem on his blog "Can newspapers afford editors?” He brings up important question: "how many editors does it take to a put a story in a paper?” Every newsroom has differing opinions on what the correct answer may be, and it really is a question we must consider in the wake of newspaper layoffs.

Mutter includes in his blog a thought provoking quote from a senior editor working at an undisclosed metropolitan newspaper:

“How many people have to read a story before it goes in the paper?” asked a senior editor at a major metropolitan daily who is struggling to sustain the quality of his news report in an era of shrinking resources. “If we have to economize, the editing process is the place. Why do we have all these people processing stories after a reporter writes it? They are not producing anything that will get us traffic on the web.”

At first read, I very much agreed with this editor: if the newspaper industry needs to make layoffs, editing is the first place to look. Do we need a story to be looked at by eight different people before the story is published? And in a time where newspapers have to compete against the Internet (a place that steals their hard earned stories and posts them on their websites saying its publicity for the newspaper when its just giving the reader a place to read the story for free), drastic cuts sometimes need to be made.

Mutter displays both sides of the story in order to give his readers the ability to judge fairly whether or not more than one or two editors are really needed at a news publication. As I really thought about this question, I began to remember how many mistakes we have found in class in newspapers like the News Gazette and the Daily Illini. I wonder if these publications have employed less editors over the years and there in lies why so many mistakes have made it to the final copy.

Mutter points out that this would be an issue if more editors were let go:

" A compelling case can be made that newspapers would debase themselves journalistically, commercially and, perhaps, even fatally by abandoning the disciplined reporting and professional editing that makes their content uniquely valuable in an age of frequently impulsive, often repulsive and usually unverified Twittering."

After reading this quote, I was sold on the fact that a good amount of editors are needed if you desire to publish a factual and clean publication. But Mutter also points out that, though the New York Times had a VERY extensive editing process, Jayson Blair and Judith Miller still got away with their wrongdoings.

So how many editors ARE needed to help publish a story at a newspaper? The majority (54.39%) of Mutter’s readers believes that 2 editors are all that is needed. Four or more comes in place at 2nd, one at 3rd and zero at 4th. One must remember that a majority of his readers are in the newspaper business themselves so therefore may deem the importance of editors higher than the average American. As for me, I am on the fence. I do think we MUST keep as many reporters as possible, but even one badly written or a falsified news story can bring down the entire publication. What do you think?

Reaction to Transforming American Newspapers

Vin Crosbie hit home when he described the real reasons for the demise of American Newspapers in his article "Transforming American Newspapers" (http://www.digitaldeliverance.com/blog/2008/08/transforming_american_newspape.html). So many editors, journalism professors and media professionals have blamed online news content as the sole rogue against American newspapers. But the truth is, it is the internet's ability to adhere to a person's individual interests (through sports websites, online music communities, ect.) that has really made the difference.

As a student who can sadly admit to only reading newspapers when it is assigned by a professor, this article's contents were not extremely shocking to me. I spend a good 5 hours online everyday reading articles, message boards and blogs that adhere to my specific interests. Crosbie brings up a fantastic point when saying the Internet allows readers to do something they never could before: use a search engine that can help a person find articles that adhere to their interests and their interests ONLY. Print and broadcast news programs must comply to a broad variety of interests instead of individual ones. Why would a busy working American want to sit down and watch an hour long news show for just one story that interests them when they can search it on google and read 10 different stories about that one subject?

I do not read newspapers as often as a Journalism student should. But I do read news everyday. However, the news I read everyday centers around fashion, rock music and Barack Obama. I may not know the economic issues facing the automobile industry but I do know that Scott Weiland was kicked out of Velvet Revolver earlier this summer and is now in the middle of a reunion tour with Stone Temple Pilots. And to the people I spend my daily life with, the Weiland news appeals to them far more than the car industry.

Newspapers are behind the times as far as catering to individual interests. But they also force us to learn about issues that we would have never searched on Google ourselves. The minimal times I do pick up a newspaper, I learn about international issues and economic crises that are usually much more interesting than I would have first gave them credit for. Without this general content, I would have never heard of Barack Obama when he was just a Illinois Senator. It was a newspaper article that introduced his name to me. Not a search engine. There is still a place in the world for general interest newspapers; they just need to find and implement the right marketing tools if they want to survive the years to come.