But the computer tells me it's right! What makes one business more worthy of profile than the hundreds of other small startups?
But the computer tells me it's right!
I saw the tweet attached as screenshot 1 a bit back on a (former--now retired) data journalist's feed. It's small scale and not the best quality, but essentially it's someone sharing an online class for data journalists to learn how to program and use number crunching software to do their job.
As an example, lets say you wondered how many tickets were written for DUI in the state. If you did a records request, you'll probably get a great big spreadsheet with all kinds of numbers and etc. How do you go searching through that to get easily-related patterns to share? This class would teach you things like that.
I saw this tweet in about midsummer. At the time I was teaching a class, a class where I had to pay careful attention to how students cited the sources they used in preparing their lab reports.** I kept taking points off a particular student because she wasn't citing properly. She took exception.
She took exception because, she insisted, she put the website for her textbook into a website and copied the result given her exactly. How is that wrong?
The problem wasn't the copying, it wasn't using something to format the citation, it was that the computer wasn't right. This student, in other words, didn't bother (know how?) to double check that what she was told was correct.
This matches the experience of a friend who told me about how newly-minted engineers can use a computer to find heat loads and design a heating/cooling system for nearly any size or shape room, but cannot assess the reasonableness of what the computer spits back at them. Some of them unquestioningly just repeat the answers given.
I think about these experiences and about the tweet. I wonder about whether and/or how much data journalists are taught in this class about checking their answers. I wonder how many data journalists bother to follow through on that. Are they doing like my student? Entering things and then mindlessly forwarding them along?
I've written about numerous cases of journalists uncritically reporting on studies and numbers. I won't revisit that (lengthy) list. I can offer you a more recent case too.
The Sun article linked below is approximately contemporaneous with the tweet above (and was written by the same reporter who retweeted about the class). If you open the link you'll note that before you even get to the story, you get an editor's note about how a screw up in the tabulation of voting data changed the entire thrust of the article and required a change from the title on down.
To their credit, both the reporter and the Sun acknowledged the mistake and fixed it. The presence of a known error, however, points to others. Others that sneak by. Others not acknowledged.
Do not, at all, be afraid to be skeptical. Do not be afraid to question what you're told. Computers and those that use them (particularly the humans that use them) are not perfect.
**In my own classes, I run things differently, but when I teach for others, I do it their way.
https://coloradosun.com/2024/07/29/colorado-legislature-bipartisan-votes-2024/
What makes this business more worthy of profile than the hundreds of other small startups?
Perhaps more importantly, should it be this way? Should one group get more help than others?
The article below profiles a business by that makes wine. The wine is made by a black woman.
I don't drink much wine outside of what I cook with**, but I don't see anything in there that tells me this wine is somehow better or worse than any other.
But the owners are black and female and this apparently has led to problems in getting financing. Could it be because she's black and female? Perhaps. She (and my guess is the reporter given the writing here) seems to think so. Quoting:
"As millennial women of color, Taylor and Mincey [Kristin Taylor and Macie Mincey, owners of Mom Juice the aforementioned wine company] would ensure their product appealed to young, diverse populations that the industry, with its pretentious sniff-and-swirl culture, had long ignored. When Taylor finished her spiel, the potential investor didn’t inquire about the company’s profit margins or advertising plan. Instead, he asked, 'What about Dad Juice?' 'We pitch to a lot of old white guys,' Taylor says, 'and that’s the number one question they bring up. What are you doing for men?' Taylor and Mincey can support their demographic target with statistics (women in America control or influence 85 percent of all consumer spending) and proven demand: Following the late 2021 release of its first wine, a Pinot Grigio, Mom Juice did $98,000 in sales over the following year on a marketing budget of less than $4,000, Taylor says."
There's a lot of jumping to conclusions here. There's a lot of fingerpointing. I don't see, other than the fact that they pitch to "old WHITE (emphasis mine) guys" with their number one questions, much evidence that this is the only reason, even the main one.
Before I felt as comfortable in race-baiting as they seem to be here, I think I'd like to see more. This isn't even disparity vs. discrimination, I don't even know whether or not there is a disparity here.
Do you suppose businesses by white women get by without question? The ones by men of color? Old white guys? Businesses run by black women that sell tires?
Maybe, maybe not. Perhaps equally important to ask is why this particular business merits special attention by the press. I'm put in mind here of the gigantically, insanely outsized attention the media paid to Casa Blanca.
Whether you're a fan of wine or Mexican food is beside the point. When the media give special attention and use their pulpit to amplify one particular business, you need to remember that there are hundreds of other businesses that are just as worthy who do not get that attention.
Media outlets, as private businesses, are under no obligation to treat everyone equal. Think, however, upon how they bill themselves. Are they giving you the information you need if they pick some over others according to THEIR whim? Are they vital to democracy when they uplift some and leave others behind?
**As a quick aside, recently tried a recipe for canned pickled roasted peppers which had white wine in the pickle. Letting it sit before popping one open and trying. First time I've ever used or seen wine in canning.
https://www.5280.com/mom-juice-kristin-taylor-is-making-wine-for-women-by-women/