Thursday, December 23, 2010

[jlucgxgw] Journalism error types

Correct and incorrect journalism fact checking can be organized into a familiar 2 by 2 square from statistics.

A source provides true information, and journalistic fact-checking corroborates, resulting it being published.  This is a true positive.

A source provides disinformation, but it is published.  Fact checking has failed.  This is a false positive, which often results in embarrassment for the journalist.

A source provides disinformation, and it is correctly not published.  True negative.

A source provides true information, but it is not published.  False negative.  This error is difficult to know about without inside information, but can be bad when it happens.

How do different news organizations compare at these error rates?  Of course, things are not so simple as comparing numbers.

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