I admit that reading Robert Niles’ “Margin of Error” was initially a challenge in and of itself, let alone coming away with a good understanding of how to correctly interpret polling data. I still have a hard time understanding the concept of a confidence interval, but after a second read-through, the general message of the article did not escape me – journalists need to understand how to incorporate the meaning of margin of error into stories involving statistics, rather than merely state what the margin of error is and then continue on to incorrectly state that a percentage has changed when, in reality, whatever change may have occurred is covered by the margin of error (as was the case in the example about polling data during the Clinton-Dole election).
Presidential election polling is a good example of how journalists, if they are not careful, can get themselves into trouble by pointing out change where there actually is none. Stating that a candidate has fallen out of favor or has increased in popularity can further affect public opinion of that candidate, and that is why understanding how to interpret statistics and margin of error is so important for journalists. In the article, Niles makes the obvious statement that to report a change in the polls where there is no change is misleading to readers – misrepresenting polling data is just as bad as all the other journalism no-no’s we are taught to avoid, such as implying that a crime suspect is guilty when he has not yet been tried.
The questions presented in the reading “20 Questions a Journalist Should Ask About Poll Results” offered a smooth continuation of the accuracy-in-poll-reporting theme presented in the first reading. The list of questions and the explanations of why those questions should be asked was exhaustive, but as the author of the first reading pointed out, poll results are far too important to be reported with carelessness or without fully understanding how to interpret data. The 20 questions were largely focused on the backgrounds of polls – who conducted the poll, who paid for the poll, how the survey respondents were chosen, and whether all respondents’ answers were included in the poll results. Like the first reading, this list included questions about margin of error and who is actually in the lead in a political poll. There are also questions about Internet polls, push polls and exit polls. The list covers every possible question I could have thought of and many more that would never have occurred to me. If all journalists reporting poll results asked all 20 of these questions, they would be in excellent shape to assure themselves and, more importantly, their readers, that the reported information is accurate and trustworthy.
I also read “The Impossible Measure of Dimness” by Rhonda Roland Shearer on Stinkyjournalism.org. The article is a response to Charlotte Allen’s “We Scream, We Swoon. How Dumb Can We Get?” published in the Washington Post early this month. I had not read Allen’s article but I read it before reading Shearer’s rebuttal on Stinkyjournalism.org, and it is pretty outrageous. I understand the point that Allen was trying to make, but she did a poor job getting from point A to point B on how the differences between men and women mean that women will never have the same abilities or social or academic prestige that men do. The idea that a woman (or a man, for that matter) would actually take the time to sit down and think of ways in which women are naturally more stupid than men and then list those ways in an article is disturbing to me.
Shearer’s opinion was in line with my own, and she categorically rebutted almost every claim that Allen used to further her point that women are inherently dumber than men. Allen even resorted to the antiquated claim that because women have smaller brains than men they are less intelligent; Shearer responded in her own article by asking, “is the same argument for African-Americans’ inferiority far behind?” I wonder the same thing. Although I don’t know how many people read Allen’s article and then read Shearer’s (or any rebuttal), I am glad that Shearer took the time to write a response and that it was posted on Stinkyjournalism.org. Allen’s style of “journalism” in this particular article is unprofessional and seems to be lacking integrity, to say the least.
