Faulty Study Left Uncorrected

It's hard to admit you made a mistake. Daniel Klein, an economics professor at George Mason University, can tell you that, but he can also tell you how to move past it. Klein wrote an opinion column over a year ago saying that liberals score much lower than conservatives on a test over basic economics, according to his newest study. He published his column in the Wall Street Journal, which headlined: "Are You Smarter than a Fifth-Grader? Self-indentified liberals and Democrats do badly on questions of basic economics".
Klein later took a second look at his data and concluded that his questions were loaded, or followed what he termed the "myside bias"- human's tendency to judge an argument based off of how closely it fits to their standard political views. Klein recently recanted his earlier findings and published the new results- but not in the Wall Street Journal. The Columbia Journalism Review emailed Klein asking why the new column appeared in the Atlantic instead of WSJ, and he responded that they had "declined the idea of a follow-up".

But shouldn't that be considered irresponsible journalism? The well-respected journal now has full knowledge that it ran an erroneous article, and the author is stepping up of his own free will to correct his past mistake. For the Wall Street Journal to decline the corrections is a loss of responsibility to their readers, some of which will never see the corrections simply because they don't read the Atlantic. The editors need to swallow their pride and put their reader's needs first.

Photo credit/creativecommons.org

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Reporting Mortgage Fraud

A local Las Vegas television station tackles mortgage fraud in the area.

There are many ways that television stations try to improve their ratings like Poynter stats, topless reporting to voice analysis, but KLAS is covering mortgage fraud in the city.

In the article, link here, journalist found that the mortgage crisis was the worst of all the reporting.

The journalist investigated the Clark County property records and found that the foreclosure papers were being robo signed or signing with a single notary.

In doing this many residents of the area that did this have problems with their titles when fore closing.

Journalist that bring this information to the people is a great way to bring up the ratings because the residence can trust the information that is being past on.

This is a great example of how journalism can help the viewers out by informing them on what is going on in the community and what they can do to fix the problem.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=har6vZgb_sI

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Social Media and Female Harassment

For years women have had to overcome certain hurdles. With the growing integration of social media in the world of journalism, female journalists have a new hurdle to leap over. 

An article on Poynter  discusses the increases harassment women have seen through social media outlets. Sexual comments and sometimes worse are being thrown around. This usually occurs when a woman reports on mainly male field of interest like politics or sports. Apparently men feel the need to rudely assert their dominance. 

This issue doesn't disappear after shutting down the computer. These online posts, sometimes lead to off-line fears. 

So, basically, all women journalists must immediately get off Facebook and Twitter, lock themselves in their room and pray for safety. No. 

There are some precautionary measure that can be taken, as mentioned in the article on Poynter. 

One women keeps personal information that she puts online to a minimum. Also, she waits until  she leaves a location to check in on Foursquare, never tweets about the hotels she stays in. It is also very common to have a professional Facebook page. 

Women must take control of the situation, and let all viewers know they need and want to be taken seriously. Clearly people are going to do what they want and that may be to harass women, but hopefully this doesn't scare the world of female journalists offline. 

Photo Courtesy of Photo Bucket

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Reporter Goes Topless for Story

While covering a story about a naked drunk driver involved in a high speed chase, WOIO reporter Paul Orlousky appears topless while recreating the drivers stunt.

Orlousky, a reporter for WOIO Action News in Cleveland, Ohio, went to the courthouse to try and get some answers from the woman who was arrested for drunk driving while wearing nothing but a thong.

At first Orlousky was confronted by the woman's lawyer who ended up swatting the video camera with her file folder.

Then after an attempt to get something from the drunk driver herself, Orlousky went topless.

In the video it shows Orlousky sitting in the car wondering why the woman would be almost completely naked while driving. The camera then zooms out to reveal he himself has no shirt on.

This could be an attempt to get more ratings for his station, or Orlousky thought humor was the best way to connect with the audience during this segment.

Many people commented on an article by Andrew Gauthier at TVSpy at mediabistro.com, showing their negative feelings toward the topless story, calling Orlousky biased and unprofessional.

Whatever the reason for Orlousky taking his shirt off was, it did bring in some additional viewers to the station to see this topless reporter in action.

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