The Daily Howler takes apart a report on schools in The Washington Post, which had written how one Maryland elementary school had improved its reading scores. As Somerby reveals, the whole state had pretty much the same gains. In other words, the journalist didn’t do his homework to provide context. (Here’s the Post’s report.)
It’s not dissimilar to the journalist here in Albuquerque who reported school taxes hadn’t gone up in so many years because the rate hadn’t changed. A simple look at any sequence of tax bills would have shown that during the same period assessments had risen markedly, so of course actual taxes had risen.
Or the journalist here who reported that 150,000 people were expected at a three-day event in an 18,000 seat arena.
I simply do not understand these kinds of mistakes.
There was an expression in my old profession that applies, I’m sure, to many other fields including journalism: “A lot of journalists are underpaid, and many of them deserve to be.”