… Given their desperate 24-hour scramble for fresh “content,” we don’t expect the mainstream media or the online alternate outlets to adopt serious standards about polls or intellectual honesty in reporting them. But as loyal readers know, you can rely on Calbuzz to shed some light from time to time. […] Read more »
Awash in Data, Thirsting for Truth
… Now, in a numbers-soaked era when the word “algorithm” seems to be on everyone’s lips and entire news outlets, like Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight blog or The Times’s own Upshot, are based on interpreting statistics, some core journalistic questions arise: How important is data to reporting? And does it get […] Read more »
How CNN’s Debate Math is Hurting Carly Fiorina
Carly Fiornia still has a math problem. Despite a stand-out performance in the Aug. 6 Republican undercard forum hosted by Fox News and Facebook, and rising poll numbers ever since, Fiorina still may not be granted a spot at CNN’s Sept. 16 debate. CONT. J. Ann Selzer, Bloomberg Politics Recent […] Read more »
How do Americans use Twitter for news?
Nearly two-thirds of U.S. adults who use Twitter get news on the platform, according to a recent survey. But we wanted a finer-grained understanding of how they use Twitter for news – not only whether they tweet about news and follow news organizations, but also what news topics they tweet […] Read more »
Hillary Clinton’s Inevitable Problems
… The campaign press more or less openly confesses to a certain type of bias: rooting for the story. Inevitability makes for a really boring story, especially when it involves a figure like Clinton who has been in public life for so long. Instead, the media wants campaigns with lots […] Read more »
How Trump has hogged the presidential campaign conversation
How is Donald Trump’s candidacy affecting the public conversation — which, in turn, influences how campaigners compete? … To understand what public conversation the current presidential campaign has kicked off, we looked closely at the talk prompted by 20 presidential candidacy announcements between March 15 and July 20, 2015. … […] Read more »