Times Ombudsman Gets It Right
Clark Hoyt, public editor for The New York Times, serves the greater cause of journalism today by reminding professional journalists about something we teach students in Journalism 101: Get the facts.
Senator Blowhard says X. Senator Numnutz says Y. No journalist should use either statement until each has been checked against the facts.
Hard work? Well, not the checking part (what constitutes a fact remains problematic, but that’s another issue). It used to be hard work. But today we have this wonderful technology that makes checking for facts much easier than in the past. A properly staffed newsroom should have a researcher or two to support the reporters (Yes, I fully understand that budgets are tight because the corporate owners care more about profit than journalism). And you have an army of civic-minded citizens out there just itching to help. A properly functioning web community nurtured by an enlightened news organization creates a tremendous information resource for reporters.
Hoyt’s column also raises another issue for me regarding facts and statistics. He uses the example of Rudy Giuliani claiming violent crime increased in Massachusetts while Mitt Romney was governor. From Hoyt’s column:
My colleague Michael McElroy came up with the facts that morning after a 10-minute check of F.B.I. statistics readily available on the Internet. Murder in Massachusetts did go up in the four years Romney was governor, from 173 in 2002, the year before he took office, to 186 in 2006, the last full year of his term. An increase of 13 murders may not seem like a crime wave in a state with a population of 6.4 million, but an increase is an increase, so Giuliani was right on that point.
No. The job is only half finished. Hoyt is correct to question the significance of the increase. Guess what? There’s a way to know. Simply calculate the standard deviation. It’s easy. Just click here, and bookmark the site. Use it often.
What’s interesting about this is that by having someone else do the research Hoyt missed some information which might have jumped out at him and present a different picture. If we look at the Mass. murder numbers for 2001-2003 we get 143, 173, 140 and for 2005-2006 the numbers were 178 and 186 (2004 had 171 murders). When looking at trends it is better practice to look at more than just the numbers at 2 points in time, since one of the numbers (like the 2002 one) might itself be an outlier. The 3 year average from 2001-2003 was 152/year and the 3 year average from 2004-2006 was 178/year which can be considered a significant increase.
Max… Exactly.