Journalism vs. Blogging

Journalism vs. Blogging

I found this story over at BoingBoing. It's the opinoin of a retired professional journalist that blogging is a form of inaccurate news that touts itself as superior to large media organization. Here are some of my thoughts on this subject.

VS.

First, as far as I can tell, the majority of blogs are personal sites dedicated to expressing opinions, sharing adventures, pointing out neat content, and making available your own creations. In fact, the term 'blog' comes from 'web log', a kind of publically available personal journal. Therefore, I hope this guy can tell the difference between the value of personal blogs and the dangers of political-propaganda-producing sites.

Next, he censures these propaganda sites for touting the results of exit polls and drawing conclusions from them during the election. That whole night, I was watching media coverage of those same pools and wondering to myself how they can present all these percentages without basic statistical information like confidence intervals. This reporter has shed some light on the subject. He says that media organizations do indeed have individuals with "PhD-style expertise" over the shoulders of professional journalists editing their words. That's right, "PhD-style expertise".

The idea of "PhD-style expertise" really gets me. Here is a guy that is complaining that propagandists do not have sufficient statistical backgrounds to correctly interpret exit poll results yet he himself is ambiguous about who is telling them what to say. Are these real statisticians? Do they have degrees or experience?

As someone who has witnessed the ability of statisticians to "massage" data, without the credentials of his fact-checkers, I have no more trust in his conclusions than a propgandist providing a different view of the same numbers presented by his own professional news organization.

This not merely a complaint, but a request for more transparency in the media's number crunching. If a professional journalist, who admits he is not a statistician, draws conclusions from data, I believe he is obligated to release all of his data to the public so that those of us who do understand statistics can verify his conclusions. I agree that somebody without proper qualitifcations should not be spreading misinformation, but at the same time, anybody claiming to be presenting the truth, should prove it. This is why scientific journals are peer-reviewed, why the government is requiring drug companies to show the data from both successful and failed clinical trials, why open source software is the true test of security and why professional journalists complained when certain counties in Ohio decided to conduct ballot counting behind closed doors.

To Mr. Eric Engberg's credit, I respect that he asking for more accuracy of information, I just don't like that he's bagging on bloggers who are trying, as best they can, to do exactly that. I think it's odd that he thinks that none of us are capable or interested in analyzing datasets with as much global impact as US Presidential election results.