The “new” journalism….
….here comes “the old fogey” again. You’re warned!
Back when I was learning to be a reporter, there was a course you had to take at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism that was based around a book with the title “How to Lie with Statistics”. The idea was that great lies were always buried in those supposedly cold numbers put out by our government….at all levels.
I was reminded of that when I read that the new Farm Bill was going to “save” $20- to 30-billion over the next five years. Now that’s not the Congress that I know very well. But that’s the headline I am seeing today in most of the big newspapers.
However, one reporter (another Old Fogey?) took the trouble to actually analyze the numbers and it turns out the new Farm Bill about to go to a vote will increase spending by more than $600-billion.
This Old Fogey concludes that one reason we’re in so much trouble is that, from the day when young reporters were taught “the government will lie with statistics and watch out!”….reporters today are taught how they should report what they think the world should be like. Really. Columbia University school of “journalism”.