More on the media and Ron Paul

A thoughtful (as always) post from Will Wilkinson at the economist comparing the major media's treatment of Ron Paul and Michelle Bachmann.

A somewhat different explanation than the one he offers is that the standard issue establishment democrats in the major media simply do not know how to think or talk about Ron Paul because he does not fit into the comfortable but conceptually incoherent boxes of red and blue that they are used to deploying when analyzing partisan politics. Under this theory, they avoid talking about Ron Paul for the same reason I generally avoid talking about macroeconomics or baseball: they want to avoid the unpleasant feeling of not understanding what they are talking about.

Creating hysteria with fake statistics

The Village Voice goes after Ashton Kutcher, Demi Moore, their celebrity charity consultants, a host of credulous big-name media organizations and a bunch of faux charities enriching themselves with government grants for promulgating essentially meaningless statistics regarding child prostitution in the US.

This sort of statistical foolishness is hardly new nor is it limited to attacks on the sex industry; indeed, it accompanies most every media scare, from upcoming ice ages to dangerous vegetables to Satanism.

Ashton Kutcher - I'd never heard of him but then I mostly stopped watching TV other than sports and elections in the early 1980s - responds to the Village Voice piece like a spoiled child rather than like, to pick a phrase, a real man. Maybe he needs a twitter consultant / editor too.

A better reaction would be for Ashton and Demi to apologize to the public and then to give some money to the American Statistical Association to fund their educational efforts. With a large enough donation, perhaps the ASA would even set up a special program called "The Ashton and Demi Program in Basic Statistics for Celebrities and Journalists."

All via Maggie McNeill.

Theorists tackle the financial crisis

David Warsh provides a readable and interesting summary of the goings-on at the 22nd Jerusalem Summer School in Economic Theory.

Reading this piece it struck me how much deeper Warsh's grasp of economics is than certain NYT economics columnists who come in for relatively frequent criticism on this blog. And, unlike certain other NYT economics columnists, Warsh seems to be able to make his points effectively without personal attacks. Seems like a misallocation of resources to me. Someone call the central planner.

Inside the tabloid press

I enjoyed this Atlantic profile of one of the middlemen who facilitates the tabloid press.

I am not quite sure how I feel about all the hand-wringing in the article about paid sources. It strikes me that there is a big difference between paying for documentary evidence versus simply paying for unverified (or even unverifiable) statements by interested parties. I am not worried about the former but am worried about the latter. Of course, hiding the latter behind the former, or providing payment in kind rather than in cash, as it appears that some more "reputable" media outlets do, does not really make things better.

Todd, Greg and Dave ...

... discuss the reduced form relationship between test scores on college entrance exams (i.e. the SAT or ACT) and performance at university.

Lesson 1: Dave needs better research assistants, who will read the literature before his column is printed in the NYT.

Lesson 2: As they so often are, one's priors are confirmed in the data.

NPR and PBS

I've read a bunch of pieces about privatizing NPR/PBS. This one by Matt Welch is the best of the lot.

Like Matt, I enjoy NPR and I do so on two levels. First, I find their coverage of music and culture more broadly to be quite good. I enjoy the interviews with musicians and other artists, as well as the classical music (during the day) and the jazz (during the evening) that one of the local public radio stations broadcasts. Second, I enjoy the news part of NPR for the same reason that I enjoy watching Fox News in the morning when I am in hotels: I like to deconstruct how they craft and present the news both to further their ideological ends and to pander to the egos of their consumers. Both NPR and Fox are really good at this!

I am quite confident that both NPR and PBS will persist without federal funding. And I am genuinely puzzled that people on the left think it is a good idea to have the federal government fund cultural amenities for the well-off (thus moving money, on average, up rather than down the income distribution) or that it is a good idea, in a free society, to have government-run media organizations at all.

I am disappointed in those who make arguments along the lines that Sesame Street will disappear if federal funding goes away. This is obviously false given the strong demand for Sesame Street; even if PBS did go away, and I do not think there is much chance of this, the more successful shows such as Sesame Street would quickly find homes elsewhere. So, those making arguments like this either are really, really lost when it comes to basic economics (not entirely implausible in this context) or simply lying.

Finally, this post gives me a chance to tell my very favorite NPR story ever. This was back when I was in college and the right was referring to NPR as the "Voice of Nicaragua". I was in a used bookstore on Capitol Hill in Seattle - long since closed sad to say - and they had NPR on in the background. It was Sunday evening and they were reading letters from listeners. The letter that has stayed with me all these years criticized NPR for their coverage of some Soviet news event the week before, arguing that they had been "too hard on Stalin."

Addendum: a fine reason post from Nick Gillespie.

Higher education cuts in Michigan

Like any high quality journalistic outlet would, annarbor.com leads with the reactions of soon-to-be undergraduate Tara:

"I think colleges are going to have to jack up tuition,” she said after hearing of Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder's budget proposal to cut higher education funding by 15 percent. “They’re going to have to. It’s going to suck. I might have to live at home because of the cost.”

OH .... MY .... GOD!!!!!!!!! Tara might have to live at home with her PARENTS!!!! They're OLD and they SUCK ....

Sigh. Must stop now and do work.

This is news in exactly what sense?

A headline from today's installment of annarbor.com:

Local officials respond unfavorably to [Michigan governor Rick] Snyder's call for cuts in state funding for municipalities

Why bother reporting something this obvious?

I look forward to future articles such as:

Local thieves applaud cuts to police budget

Local golfers respond favorably to continued city subsidies to their hobby

Surely annarbor.com can do better than this?

Former prostitute out-researchers CNN ...

... and does so in only 90 minutes.

Via the Agitator.

Clarence Thomas - evildoer?

Common Cause has outed Clarence Thomas for not checking boxes on disclosure forms or, rather, one suspects, for hiring an accountant who did not do this. The employment relationship he failed to disclose is widely known and there is apparently no penalty attached to not checking this box.

This is interesting and worth of attention in the LA Times because .... ?

It gets better though. We also learn, from the (one assumes) Common Cause press release repeated in the LA Times, that Thomas once attended a meeting with conservatives who donate to election campaigns. Imagine! And because of that, Thomas should recuse himself from cases involving campaign finance. Let's see, last I knew, all nine justices were appointed by presidents and confirmed by senators, all of whom receive evil campaign finance donations. Perhaps they should all recuse themselves?

Oh, and the shock quotes in this sentence:

... an organization she founded to restore the "founding principles" of limited government and individual liberty.

add a nice touch of politicized historical ignorance to the entire affair.

Is this really the best Common Cause can do with its donors money?

Parody of newspaper articles covering scientific papers

This offering from the Guardian is fabulous!

Two teasers:

In this paragraph I will state in which journal the research will be published. I won't provide a link because either a) the concept of adding links to web pages is alien to the editors, b) I can't be bothered, or c) the journal inexplicably set the embargo on the press release to expire before the paper was actually published.

This paragraph contained useful information or context, but was removed by the sub-editor to keep the article within an arbitrary word limit in case the internet runs out of space.

Read the whole thing - I was laughing out loud.

Hat tip: Taylor Hui

The loco-motion

Steve Landsburg does a hammer job on locovores and their misguided critics.

Nice.

The depressing part is that the reader is reminded that one does not have to understand even really, really, really basic economics in order to get published talking about economic issues in the NYT.

Hat tip: Scott Wood

Traffic, NYC, NYT and the mysterious missing denominators

The NYT covers a report on pedestrian accidents on NYC streets from NYC's transportation department.

Here is a bit from the NYT summary:

Pedestrians would be well advised to favor sidewalks to the right of moving traffic — left-hand turns were three times as likely to cause a deadly crash as right-hand turns — and to stay particularly alert at intersections, where three-quarters of the crashes occurred.

Could it possibly be that more accidents happen at intersections because intersections are almost always where the pedestrians are out in the street with the cars?

Some denominators sneak in during a discussion of taxis, but prove a bit complex and confusing:

In Manhattan, about 16 percent of pedestrian crashes that led to death or serious injury involved a taxi or livery cab. Taxis account for only 2 percent of vehicles registered in the city, but at some times of day, they can make up nearly half of Manhattan’s traffic, according to some estimates — challenging the widely held perception of cabbies as the scourges of city streets.

Of course, the correct denominator is vehicle-miles, not vehicles registered, as taxis presumably get driven quite a lot more than the average vehicle, particularly in NYC. Thus, the numbers stated here are consistent with both taxis having safe, professional drivers who pose less of a danger than others and with them being the scourge of the streets. There just is not enough information to know.

Here is the wise transportation commissioner:

“One crash is one crash too many,” said Ms. Sadik-Khan, who said that Monday’s report would help her department “solve the riddle of why people are dying, and where they are dying, in the city.”

Of course, the optimal number of crashes is not in fact zero but rather the positive number at which the marginal cost of avoiding additional accidents equals the marginal cost from doing so. I guess there are no economists and no denominators at NYC's transportation department.

Not a very impressive performance from either the "newspaper of record" or NYC's transportation department.

Hat tip: Jesse Gregory (whose email said (correctly): "seems like the kind of article you love to hate")

NYT throws sand at Economist, refuses to share shovel

A rather snotty NYT piece on the marketing strategy and circulation success of the Economist.

For me, the more relevant difference between the NYT and the Economist is that when they write about a subject I know something about, the Economist is much more likely to get it right.

And, really, for the NYT to be suggesting that Economist readers are posers and wannabes is so rich, and so lacking in self-knowledge, as to almost defy description.

Now if only the Economist had a monthly "best of" edition I would subscribe. Every week is just too much paper.

Causation and correlation: occupational edition

Reuters produces and the NYT publishes a report on a study of bivariate correlations between occupations and death rates. Neither the authors of the study nor the reporter seems to understand that the estimates are not causal.

This will give you the idea:

Higher than average risk of death from HIV/AIDS was found among male tailors and dressmakers and male hairdressers, while accidental poisoning by drug was high among male painters, decorators, bricklayers, plasterers and roofers.

I look forward to the pathbreaking research on the causal effect of proximity to scissors and sewing machines on HIV/AIDS that is inspired by this work.

No link to the study, no mention of whether it is published and not even any quotes from experts. This is an "F" for sure.

Hat tip: Jessica Goldberg

Email is forever

Dave Weigel, formerly of Reason and now formerly of the Washington Post, learns about the permanence of email.

I have to say, though, that other than breaking the taboo and revealing that journalists actually have political opinions, I am not really sure what he did that was bad enough for the Post to let him go.

The Onion desconstructs CNN / local news

Breaking News: Some Bullshit Happening Somewhere

Addendum 1: This post has been acting up, so I have cut out the embed and just left the link.

Addendum 2: The BBC version pointed to by commenter Jessica is at least as funny as the Onion video.

Science news cycle

This captures it perfectly!

It is a mixture of universities wanting publicity, news outlets wanting to generate excitement and fear, and ignorance of how science works on the part of journalists and the public. The only thing the comic leaves out is the wild over-representation of counter-intuitive findings in the media, because of course they are news, and confirmation of existing views is not.

Hat tip: the agitator

Helping the news media with polls

Hat tip: Jessica Goldberg

Last day of the Ann Arbor News

Coverage here.