More Fun & Games With Stats
I’d like to propose that we re-think the entire project of higher education in journalism. A journalism degree should indicate more than that the graduate can do a job roughly described as reporting and writing the news. The graduate ought to have an understanding of language (rhetoric and linguistics) and history following from the liberal arts and a social-scientist’s understanding of human behavior (politics, psychology, and economics).
Oh, and statistics.
That’s a tall order to be sure, if for no other reason than news organizations don’t pay enough to encourage students to get such an education (as opposed to professions such as law and medicine that demand it).
Problem is: Journalism is an important cultural, social, political, and economic practice. Done well, it has the potential to help us understand our world, our place in it, and how we can operate within it to achieve our personal and collective goals. Done poorly, it can hurt or kill; it can blind us to the truth and cripple our personal and collective abilities to cooperate and achieve.
Click here. Follow the links–especially the two discussions about suicide rates among returning soldiers following from recent coverage in the news.
A news story about suicide rates among returning soldiers, like any situation in which statistics are used to discover and/or indicate something like the truth, must properly deal with the complexities and uncertainties of social, political, and economic situations (not to mention getting the numbers right). And because this is difficult to do, the default position should always be: Get more information. Find experts who know. Be damned careful and damned sure before publishing anything.
An easier way to think about this: Stop with the trend stories already!
In some cases, trend stories are merely frivolous and do no more harm than to cause stupidity among those stupid enough to read them. In other cases, trend stories can shift societal thinking away from truth and into inadequate–yet socially or politically comforting–mythology.
Journalism, if it must continue reporting “trends” (and anything in the sciences) needs an ethic of the non-sexy disclaimer (an ontology, really). If you’ve never seen one of these, pick up a copy of nearly any respectable academic journal of social science. You’ll usually discover in the conclusion of many studies a statement that qualifies the study and cautions against certainty in interpretation. The reason: We’re all still trying to figure it out; things could change; we might be wrong.
The rhetoric of journalism, however, is the rhetoric of certainty. Wouldn’t it be cool if…
Thanks, Andy!
Astounding Arrogance at CBS
As always you rail accurately from your perspective of journalism. Wouldn’t it be interesting if students came to the university level prepared to reason and express their views eloquently? What would happen if people actually had a firm grounding in language (grammar), western civilization, and the ability to express themselves orally and in the written word before they even started their specializations? A good liberal arts education should be required for every bachelor’s degree. I feel that educational goals have been watered down across the board at universities. For instance, wouldn’t it be reasonable to have a university that actually banned multiple choice and true false testing? Shouldn’t people at the university level be capable of expressing their knowledge in complete sentences? I apologize for the rant, but your first paragraph about basic requirements for journalists is something I think should be required for any respectable university.