The Artful Doubter
Gallup: Public Confidence in News Media Falls to New Low [E&P]
With a headline like that is there any wonder we roll our eyes over to the endless supply of celebrity nip-slips? It's intellectual sensationalism, that is if you think Gallup and E&P are worthy of such status. When you read the article and discover the new low is down 2% from the year before and squeaks under the previous low by 1% from 11 years ago (let me repeat, down 1% from 11 years ago) you get a more subdued picture, like a 1st grader's finger-paint project. It has all the statistical signficiance of the proverbial "fart in the wind."
[Disclosure: As a first-grader I had one such painting selected for a showcase in the Annapolis Mall along with a gazillion others from Anne Arundel County. As most mad bursts of creative genius go, I was unsure exactly what I came up with and when the teacher insisted it should have a title I blurted "Martian on a Fence."]
The article goes onto to describe how other institutions like the presidency, Congress, criminal justice system fared much worse. E&P gets some leeway with their headline since they mainly cover media-related news but why project such leading horseshit? Sure these numbers are down from previous highs in 2000 but since media scandals (Jayson Blair, Dan Rather, etc) are much more worthy of front page news and likely to have a shelf-life longer than the annual Pulitzer announcements, this is not surprising.
Also, when you broadly stroke any "institution" in a survey like that of course the creamed rises to the top. It's like those polls about trust in Congress that also ask about trust in your own Congressional representatives. Everyone says "baaad baaad" for Congress as a whole but always "goood goood" for their own. Same logic can be applied here. I wonder what wild percentages you'd get if they asked about lack of confidence in their local newspaper or news station. Doubtful it would look any different than the Congressional rep. example, though I never really trusted the Crofton-Crier after they put a close-up picture of my brother at the Village Green's annual Christmas lighting on the front page. As one of maybe four Jewish families in town at the time you'd think they could fact-check this shit. Where was the fact-checking??!
Anyway, I have an idea. How about a public confidence poll on public confidence polls?
With a headline like that is there any wonder we roll our eyes over to the endless supply of celebrity nip-slips? It's intellectual sensationalism, that is if you think Gallup and E&P are worthy of such status. When you read the article and discover the new low is down 2% from the year before and squeaks under the previous low by 1% from 11 years ago (let me repeat, down 1% from 11 years ago) you get a more subdued picture, like a 1st grader's finger-paint project. It has all the statistical signficiance of the proverbial "fart in the wind."
[Disclosure: As a first-grader I had one such painting selected for a showcase in the Annapolis Mall along with a gazillion others from Anne Arundel County. As most mad bursts of creative genius go, I was unsure exactly what I came up with and when the teacher insisted it should have a title I blurted "Martian on a Fence."]
The article goes onto to describe how other institutions like the presidency, Congress, criminal justice system fared much worse. E&P gets some leeway with their headline since they mainly cover media-related news but why project such leading horseshit? Sure these numbers are down from previous highs in 2000 but since media scandals (Jayson Blair, Dan Rather, etc) are much more worthy of front page news and likely to have a shelf-life longer than the annual Pulitzer announcements, this is not surprising.
Also, when you broadly stroke any "institution" in a survey like that of course the creamed rises to the top. It's like those polls about trust in Congress that also ask about trust in your own Congressional representatives. Everyone says "baaad baaad" for Congress as a whole but always "goood goood" for their own. Same logic can be applied here. I wonder what wild percentages you'd get if they asked about lack of confidence in their local newspaper or news station. Doubtful it would look any different than the Congressional rep. example, though I never really trusted the Crofton-Crier after they put a close-up picture of my brother at the Village Green's annual Christmas lighting on the front page. As one of maybe four Jewish families in town at the time you'd think they could fact-check this shit. Where was the fact-checking??!
Anyway, I have an idea. How about a public confidence poll on public confidence polls?
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