Politics & Media:
* Why Political Coverage is Broken (Jay Rosen's PressThink). An interesting article arguing that writing about an election like a horse race is wrong. (That's two of his three points and thing that resonated the strongest with me.)
Also, a radio segment, A Media Post Mortem on "Death Panels" (WNYC's On the Media via NPR), describes another facet of political coverage that bothers me. This piece explores how the media can debunk a claim while simultaneously printing quotes and statements made by the people on the wrong side of the facts. (Yes, it's an odd dialectic.) There is no reason we should pay any attention to things people say that are wrong.
Statistics, Academics, and Media:
* The statistical error that just keeps on coming (The Guardian). Fundamentally, making precise statistical statements requires a lot of careful thought and phrasing.
They've identified one direct, stark statistical error so widespread it appears in about half of all the published papers surveyed from the academic neuroscience research literature.
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