Boomer News

Do Journalist still avoid graphs?

Journalist are verbal people … which makes sense. Verbal people write books and stories in print that are interesting, enjoyable, and educational. With the advent of the camera and TV,  journalist  had to combine their prose with pictures. But a graph is not a photo, and journalist seem to  be uncomfortable trying to be descriptive about graphs that require some understanding of the raw data that  generated the graph.

Kids, our goal is to have a TV station that is dedicated to presenting charts and graphs of the most accurate, concise  raw data available on the status of the world’s most important issues.  This requires that the scientific method be used by the people who acquire the raw data and that the journalist, with the aid of a scientist, believe in the accuracy of the information they are presenting to the public on TV.

Kids, do you know what the “hockey stick controversy” is all about? How about you journalist out there? The global warming dispute started over the reconstructed estimates of the Northern temperature changes from the year 1000 to the year 2000. The curve looks flat from 1000 to the year 1900 … followed by a sharp increase. A PhD named Jerry Mahlman named it the “hockey stick curve” because it reminded him of the shape of a hockey stick. The dispute arises over the accuracy of the raw data.

Global warming information presents the journalist with the very interesting assignment to initially explain to the public just how complex the science of climate change is … and that many, many factors are involved in presenting an accurate picture of where science is, in obtaining an honest picture of their present projections.

Will anyone actually watch this TV station? I know I would, rather than hear and see the pundits of the far right and far left, who command a disproportionate amount of time on TV … or the “out-of-context snip-its” of the network journalists. And then AP news stories that get used over and over again  by other news outlets … that add to “The Too Much Information Problem.”

In my opinion, there would be no trouble filling up the time with interesting important accurate information. What do you kids think?