Just the facts, ma'am...
The mainstream media lives to bash the bloggers of the world about our incredible lack of grammar skills and use of the English language. While they are generally correct on that assumption, we bloggers enjoy bashing mainstream writers on their inability to present the facts correctly or bash their broad opinions on minuscule amounts of data and/or statistics.
I ran across this AP article on MSNBC.com regarding the Pirates win over the Yankees in a make-up date from a June rain-out. Here is the headline from the article:
Pirates snap Yankees' 4-game winning streak
And here is a paragraph from the article:
Damaso Marte finished for his fourth save in six opportunities, helping end New York’s five-game winning streak.
OK. I do not nor have I ever worked for a newspaper or online media source, but I will go with the assumption that at least one person if not two are supposed to read a story prior to its publishing. I don't think I'm reaching here by saying that someone should have caught the fact that you have "4-game winning streak" in the headline and "five-game winning streak" in the article. (The correct answer is the Pirates ended the Yankees four-game winning streak by the way.)
If my lack of grammar and English language skills can catch that one from just a casual reading of the article, shouldn't someone else whose job to catch this type of error have caught that? It's not like we are nitpicking on someone's OPS+ or VORP or EqA which makes most media writers scratch their heads or their backsides about what we are talking about or yell at us about how it is about runs batted in, batting average and wins and not some convoluted statistic that we used Big Blue to come up with.
Come on people! The Buzz Bissinger's feel we bloggers have no "journalistic integrity". Well the more the "real" journalists continue to make mistakes like this, the more bloggers will gain on them. I know...out of 100 blogging sites there are maybe only one or a small few that you could classify as a quality and worthwhile site. (We'll eave it up to you on where you feel we belong.) Yet slowly more and more sites and bloggers are getting better while the sports media is getting worse and worse.
The first rule in journalism...OK, my first rule I just made up... is to GET THE FACTS STRAIGHT!!!!!!
The second rule is go bash the idiot who can't follow rule #1.
I ran across this AP article on MSNBC.com regarding the Pirates win over the Yankees in a make-up date from a June rain-out. Here is the headline from the article:
Pirates snap Yankees' 4-game winning streak
And here is a paragraph from the article:
Damaso Marte finished for his fourth save in six opportunities, helping end New York’s five-game winning streak.
OK. I do not nor have I ever worked for a newspaper or online media source, but I will go with the assumption that at least one person if not two are supposed to read a story prior to its publishing. I don't think I'm reaching here by saying that someone should have caught the fact that you have "4-game winning streak" in the headline and "five-game winning streak" in the article. (The correct answer is the Pirates ended the Yankees four-game winning streak by the way.)
If my lack of grammar and English language skills can catch that one from just a casual reading of the article, shouldn't someone else whose job to catch this type of error have caught that? It's not like we are nitpicking on someone's OPS+ or VORP or EqA which makes most media writers scratch their heads or their backsides about what we are talking about or yell at us about how it is about runs batted in, batting average and wins and not some convoluted statistic that we used Big Blue to come up with.
Come on people! The Buzz Bissinger's feel we bloggers have no "journalistic integrity". Well the more the "real" journalists continue to make mistakes like this, the more bloggers will gain on them. I know...out of 100 blogging sites there are maybe only one or a small few that you could classify as a quality and worthwhile site. (We'll eave it up to you on where you feel we belong.) Yet slowly more and more sites and bloggers are getting better while the sports media is getting worse and worse.
The first rule in journalism...OK, my first rule I just made up... is to GET THE FACTS STRAIGHT!!!!!!
The second rule is go bash the idiot who can't follow rule #1.
Labels: Buzz Bissinger, facts, journalistic integrity
posted by Zinglebert Bembledack at
10:03 AM
1 Comments:
It's somewhat important for journalists to be accurate and get the facts straight, much like it's somewhat important for a surgeon to have some knowledge of the human body.
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