Fox News is rapidly becoming the network of racists and sexual predators. Every day new allegations of harassment, intimidation and abuse are coming to light. These are periodically followed by multi-million dollar court settlements and occasionally someone else gets fired. The supposedly ‘fair and balanced’ Fox rose to prominence during the Rush Limbaugh right wing…
3 Ways to spot a bad statistic with Mona Chalabi
In this 12 minute Ted Talk, Mona Chilabi, currently of the Guardian (and formerly of FiveThirtyEight, Bank of England, and the Economist Intelligence Unit) talks about the importance of government data and the misuse of statistics. Most journalists have only a basic understanding of how to use statistics and know even less about how to…
Politics isn’t a sport and CNN isn’t really journalism
Photo credit: hyku via Visualhunt / CC BY In the FAQ for this site, I mentioned that CNN and the other American cable news networks were deliberately not included on this site. This video from Vox helps to explain why. In the early days of CNN, it was a decent source of news and information.…
Link: Is the media doing fact checking wrong?
Fact checking by news organizations typically focuses on specific statements made by elected officials or stories posted by other media organizations. What if, instead, the media focused on educating the public on what is true about a particular issue and de-emphasized the truthiness of various leaders and candidates? This was the issue discussed in an…
Link: Avoiding misinterpreting statistics
In 2017 the world is awash in data and statistics; polls and surveys, censuses and economic data, trending topics and web analytics are just the start. As the internet of things enters our lives, the amount of available data will grow exponentially. With all of that data at our disposal, it is natural and appropriate…
A 10,000 character limit would kill Twitter, but there are ways to save it
Twitter executives are reportedly considering changing Twitter’s 140 character limit to a 10,000 character limit – turning Twitter into a blogging service and feed reader. For me Twitter is the world’s best cocktail party. I can walk in to a room full of people that I have specifically chosen. For me that room includes politicians,…
In the information age, a strong public broadcaster is more important than ever
Many would argue that in the information age there is no longer a need for a national public broadcaster. Those that make that argument however, are already behind the times. The information age has rapidly turned into the age of information overload. In 2014 public broadcasting’s mission may have changed, but the need for it…
You won’t believe how mind blowing this video about clickbait is!
As someone who writes for what I, increasingly inaccurately, refer to as a ‘living’ I understand the temptations of clickbait, but try very hard not to engage in the practice – no matter how ‘Upworthy’ I believe a story may be. What I find even more disturbing is a recent trend to sensationalize headlines to…
Media Myths: Reality TV and Unbiased Reporting
I hear the terms “reality tv” and “media bias” frequently, but the reality is that there is no such thing as reality tv, and while there is no “media bias” there is no such thing as “unbiased reporting”. Media, whether we are talking about television, film, commercials or journalism is about storytelling and you…
A ‘New’ CNN Might Not Be a Bad Thing
There was quite a bit of fuss on Twitter today about the changes Jeff Zucker might bring to CNN. ”After almost a year of tinkering, CNN Worldwide President Jeff Zucker has concluded that a news channel cannot subsist on news alone. So he is planning much broader changes for the network—including a prime-time shakeup that’s…