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The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
An Attempt to Cover
Outsourcing; and Two Good Reasons Not to Read The Washington Post
August 31, 2005
It wasn’t a good week for the media. Most major news outlets
continued to parrot the claim that America is at record highs in oil
and gasoline prices.
The Good
Doing a good job on an outsourcing story – any
outsourcing story – is a challenge for the news media. ABC’s “World
News Tonight” didn’t pull off a success, but they deserve
points for effort. In an August 25 report, reporter Barbara
Pinto took a trip to rural Minnesota, “Hardly the place computer
programmer Dave La Reau expected to find work.” Pinto went a long
way for a “Closer Look” at outsourcing, but the coverage still came
up a few miles short.
The Bad
Washington Post Style writer David Montgomery opted to
be snarky rather than accurate. His August 24 piece entitled “Fuel
Hardy” didn’t just make the mistake about so-called record gas
prices, but Montgomery
had to outdo himself. First, he repeated the error claiming,
“New records have been set nearly every day for the last two weeks
in the Washington area…” But Montgomery admitted later in his piece
that he was wrong and just chose to ignore the facts: “Never mind
the inflation-adjusted nerds who point out that regular unleaded gas
today is still cheaper than the $3.11 it cost in today’s dollars in
1981.”
The Ugly
When a professional athlete dies too young, people
naturally look for blame. Washington Post reporters Mark Maske and
Leonard Shapiro showed why they should stick to the Sports pages.
The duo devoted more than 2,000 words to the question of
professional football players’ obesity in their August 25
article. Unfortunately, they ate up a study of NFL players that
relied on the heavily flawed Body Mass Index, which uses height and
weight to calculate obesity.
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly tracks the best and worst media
coverage of business and economics. Readers are invited to submit
suggestions or news tips to Director Dan Gainor at
dgainor@mediaresearch.org.
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