I am used to news articles about vaccines that report claims about nonexistent vaccine dangers, “balanced” with opposition views from knowledgeable physicians and scientists. It’s idiotic and annoying that reporters think that fringe claims from unqualified people should get the same billing as evidence presented by public health professionals, but that’s pretty standard stuff.
What’s amazing in its profound stupidity and lack of journalistic standards is this article from the Courier-Post (a southern New Jersey paper). It quotes a Dr. Mayer Eisenstein on the supposed uselessness of vaccines (the good doctor is a fervent antivaccinationist who promotes “alternative” remedies for diseases, including hawking this completely useless “probiotic” treatment for swine flu).
The article includes the amazingly ignorant claim that there are no vaccines available against measles and whooping cough, and the denialist viewpoint that vaccines did not drastically reduce the incidence of numerous infectious diseases. Not only did the reporter accept this nonsense without challenge, she failed to present any countering views.
Is there such a critical shortage of qualified reporters in the Philly/Cherry Hill area that dumbasses like this have to be hired for reporting jobs?
I particularly liked the bit about the (ahem) scientific study in which “about two to three” of the vitamin D cohort reported having a cold. I mean, I was always taught that it was essential to include error bars, but that’s going a little over the top.
Sloppy is right. I can’t completely blame the reporter for her lack of scientific knowledge. A reporter can’t know everything about everything, else what would there be to report but the reporter’s opinion. But you always always ALWAYS get more than one source for your data or it just becomes a marketing piece. And when you’re reporting on a subject that you’re unfamiliar with where the guy is making huge blanket statements like “The more people receive the flu vaccine, the more deaths there are” and saying that they maaaay not be related wink wink nudge nudge, then you absolutely must confirm what he’s saying. Unless you already believe it yourself and you’re just using your newspaper column as a ways to pass this information along.
Hey…thats my local paper! Which means chances are that the reporter just didn’t know what was going on and simply wrote down what the guy said verbatim. You don’t get much critical thinking at a 25K per year salary.
This is probably a young, inexperienced reporter just getting started in the business. Her editors and copyeditors should be teaching her about skepticism, sourcing, and other things that make you a good reporter. Unfortunately, with newspapers slashing staff like nobody’s business, there are fewer and fewer experienced people around to guide young reporters. Remember, it doesn’t take just one reporter to get a bad story into a newspaper. It takes a whole editorial staff, too. With personnel cuts, whole layers of critical supervision might be missing.
I’ve had a salary that bad and never written anything that bad.
While you make some good points here, and I don’t know anything about the Courier-Post, even a young reporter ought to bring something to the table, and the result here is embarrassing. There is no reporting here. The article is completely one-sided and despite the “doctors say” comment in the lede, there are no other doctors in the story.
The reporter gets off the stage and gives this one doctor the microphone to spout his theory. Even if she’s new and untrained, she should know that. She doesn’t do any research on the doctor’s claim that flu vaccines are associated with increased deaths, or that skin cancer is the cure for autism, or that the especially odd claim that measles and whooping cough disappeared without a vaccine!
“Lavinia DeCastro is a staff writer and videographer at the Courier-Post. She spends nearly all her free time watching films, making films or wishing she was watching or making films. She is co-producing an independent film, had numerous blink-and-you-miss-it appearances on locally produced film and television shows and spent many hours hunched over her Wacom tablet.”
This consuming interest has not prevented her from writing dynamic stories like the one on vaccines, or “Economic Woes Cut Into Moth Program”.
Her stuff circulates in a major metro area. I blush for the Courier-Post.
Although it’s nice to hear that tuberculosis has almost been wiped out. :rolleyes:
These are valid criticisms of this story, but in my experience, about 90 percent of 22-year-old fresh from college reporters start off doing single-sourced, one-sided, unresearched stories like this. They have to be taught how to interact with sources, how to think about what sources say, and most of all, how to go about looking for other sources of information. Your idea that “even a young reporter” should know better doesn’t jibe with my experience of real life. Kids just out of college and in their first reporting jobs are incredibly naive, and they don’t know what it takes to do reporting, and they don’t learn unless someone is sitting in that office with them teaching them.
I remember doing some signficant rewrites of stories by a 22-year-old reporter for reasons like this, but there was nothing this bad! Nevermind the fact that this was not written by a 22-year-old fresh out of college reporter, and the fact that it did make it it into print.
The problem is that you just stop giving a shit. You figure that if they pay you shit wages then the job must not be that important and so why give it your all.
Maybe I wasn’t clear enough, but I have been a reporter for a local paper and made that kind of money, and still never written anything that awful. Of course, maybe that’s why I’m not at that job anymore.
It really is a podonk regional type paper. If it was in the New York Times or even the Philly Inquirer, it might be cause for a little concern. As it is, this is a dying newspaper in an already dying industry. No excuse for laziness or lack of critical thinking, but at this point, I can’t really expect much more from that particular newspaper.
Though I probably shouldn’t be too hard on them. They did name me SJ Tennis Player of the Year in 2001. Which…probably is another notch on their crappy reporting belt.
Does the Courier-Post ever publish anything that is not incredibly dumb and sloppy? Everything about that paper has always just felt second-rate, and I’ve always kind of felt that their staff at all levels consist of people who couldn’t quite cut it at, say, the Philly Daily News.
Also, they published a bunch of articles by local superstar Blair Hornstine which really kind of reflects the standards they have (scroll down to the Courier-Post section).
Not that it explains or justifies anything, but her first language is apparently not English— according to this article she’s Brazilian and has been in the U.S. for 16 years (half her life, she says).
Oh, and here’s an unnecessarily enormous picture of Ms. DeCastro, for you pin-up fans.
I’ve been in that situation (though not reporting) for lower wages than that…and I didn’t do my best job figuring that the pay was an indication to how important people thought it was. Instead I invested my time and energy into things that did matter and would help me in the future. Of course, maybe that’s why I’m not at that job anymore…
Snarkiness aside…being in that situation can really sap the soul. Some fall into despair.
Oh hell, I can defend this statement. The population of the earth is growing. More people are getting vaccines. More people are dying too. Coincidence?" Ergo ipso facto blahblahblah…
