PRESS PATTERNS
They Didn't Teach Math in J-School? [Mark Krikorian]
At a time when more and more policy advocacy and policymaking is based on the assessment of data, the English majors who become reporters and editors are as bad as ever at discussing numbers. The WaPost had some cute stories on teenage entrepreneurs with a couple real howlers: "Last year, he sold 10 of his photographs, netting about $1,000 in gross sales." (Last time I checked, "net" and "gross" were different concepts.)
And this one in a story about a girl who bakes gourmet dog treats: "According to a survey by the American Pet Products Manufacturing Association, people in the United States spent $34.4 billion on their pets in 2004. The bulk of that — $14.2 billion — was spent on food." (How can the "bulk" be less than half of something?) And then a graphic in the Business section, of all places, (it accompanied this story, but isn't online) had a caption saying the volume of first-class mail has been declining since 1999, when the graph clearly shows volume declining since 1990.
Sure, these are trivial examples, but if newspapers can't get "net" and "gross" right, how are they going to write about the federal budget intelligently?
03/26 04:35 PM
Share
