When you hear an outlandish poll result, you first thought may be, “Wow, people are stupid.” You’d be wrong. Blame the pollsters and the people who publicize their spurious results, not the supposed “voters” they contacted. In the last month, we’ve heard these unbelievable poll results: 30% of likely Republican voters think we should bomb Agrabah, the fictional…
Sometimes the political media gets so tangled up in its own underwear that it’s comical. Musings about expectations don’t qualify as news — they should be marked “for entertainment purposes only.” That’s why I must ridicule Kathie Obradovich’s recent article in the Des Moines Register (also reprinted into the Boston Globe). There are candidate positions. There is…
Health news is pretty much an oxymoron. All health articles hedge — the “news” is all provisional. But some are much worse, like this Wall Street Journal article about what to take for a headache. “Advil vs. Tylenol. Which to Use, and When,” doesn’t tell you what to use, or when — it suggests what you…
An open letter to Mark Zuckerberg, CEO and Sheryl Sandberg, COO, Facebook: False news is out of hand. People read lies and obliviously share them on Facebook. You can solve this problem. Not only that, you can solve it in a scalable way, without censoring anything and without changing your main sharing algorithm. Let’s see how….
People see patterns, but sometimes they are coincidences. To analyze numbers in a meaningful way, you must be disciplined both in how you collect them and how you connect them. Otherwise, you’re just doing numerology. Take Charles Arthur’s article in The Guardian called “90:9:1 – the odd ratio that technology keeps creating.” The intelligent reader asks…
Christopher L. Gasper is a Boston Globe sportswriter. His metaphors startle the reader, jarring you from the trance of reading and making you say “wha?” Learn from his excesses. I’ve recommended that you avoid cliches in your writing. Don’t say “dumb as a post” if you can say “dopey as Sarah Palin.” But there’s a limit. When…
Two months after The New York Times‘ devastating takedown of Amazon’s culture, Amazon fired back. Where’s the whole truth here? There is none. Because by definition, stories always leave out more than they include. As briefly as possible, here’s what happened. On August 15, the Times wrote about Amazon’s “bruising workplace.” Jeff Bezos emailed his employees a non-denial…
In a front-page article, the Boston Globe sneers at Donald Trump for speaking at a fourth-grade level. They imply that simplicity is equivalent to stupidity. In fact, a bias toward complexity — the same bias inherent in this article — is what has given us a world pervaded by bullshit. The Globe ran the candidates’ speeches…
How many metaphors can The New York Times pack into one article about the resignation of House Speaker John Boehner? Enough metaphors to choke a . . . c’mon, help me here. To choke a something-or-other. Can you spare a metaphor? Metaphors are a great way to frame a story; knowledgeable people will often supply one in a…