Making up the story
I will admit it’s a little thing, but it irks me. The Boston Globe today has an article by Joanna Weiss about the Clark campaign “blasting” a leaflet from the Dean campaign. In order to build the narrative, the fourth paragraph says that “Clark aids said that the Dean attack was a sign that…the presidential race might be evolving into a two-way battle…”
The fifth paragraph then validates this point of view:
A New Hampshire tracking poll released this week by American Research Group indicated Clark in second place behind Dean, pulling ahead of … Kerry…
The sixth paragraph continues the story:
A USA Today poll indicated Clark and Dean in a statistical tie nationwide.
Hmm. The first poll mentioned has Clark at 16% and Kerry at 13%, with a margin of error of plus or minus 4 points. The second one has Dean with 24% and Clark with 20%, with a margin of error of 5. The Globe article ignores the margin of error in the NH poll but includes it in the national poll. Why? I can only presume because the story tells better that way.
Clark is coming up quickly in the polls. That’s an important story. We could do without shading the statistics to make it “tell” better.
The Globe’s lead story today is Bush’s immigration reform proposal. I read all three articles in the set and I still don’t what Bush is proposing or how it’s different than what currently exists. This is some bad reporting.
Here’s a Q&A from the Miami Herald that I found much more helpful.
It turns out that the proposal, which does not give illegal immigrants the right to apply for permanent residency, sets up a “guest” status where “guest” means “Willing to pay a fee to take a job so crappy that, even during the worst economy for jobs since the Depression, no American is willing to take it.” Be our guest to do our back-stooping, subsistence-paying labor! You’re welcome!
(Are FAQs becoming more useful than inverted pyramids in telling non-narrative journalistic stories?)
Categories: Uncategorized dw
Although I agree hearily with “W’s Psychology” Babs analysis (I was just interviewed by one–mixed sweet/dominatrix complex), and I am not being mysogenist here[never mind “politically correct”], how do you explain the overwhelming support, even sympathy, for him among the general populace?
I personally was rather unemployed for a while after I got out of the US navy. I did not have a social network in place and it was pretty hard to get a job about 12 months ago…I do not think the #s are that different right now.
I believe he wants to pick up Hispanic vote while increasing corporate profits.
This program idea does not provide much protection or benefit to the workers since
1.) they would have to return to their native country to get a green card
2.) the employer can file to give them residence, which can be use as a leverage point to manipulate the worker
Joshua Micah Marshall blogged a transcript of the briefing at which “senior administration officials” laid out the plan.
Speaking of the Miami Herald, I soptted this recent new item:
The Sykes Call Center in Ada, OK opened in 1999 after the city agreed to give the company an incentive package of 20 acres of land, utility hookups and a lump sum payment of $2.5 million.
Now they are offshoring the whole operation…nice investment, eh?