19 Dec 2003 | jarv75 said...

I find it really annoying, even the BBC are guilty of this kind of thing now. Especially with the big stories, they seem to be becoming more and more prone to sensationalism and getting little facts very slightly wrong.

19 Dec 2003 | Steven Garrity said...

How many floors there are in a building is one thing, but how many people have been killed in an accident is no more accurate.

19 Dec 2003 | steve, another steve said...

I played hockey with a anchor person from a local TV station and I'm always suprised how little they really know about what they're reporting on. They grab a few key points and go with it. 60 minutes did a piece on illegal downloading, Kazza, etc and it was very clear how little Lesley Stahl knew about the subject. Almost too painful to watch.

"You can download a movie in less time then it takes to watch it." I've.....errr......my friend's friend's brother never downloaded a movie that fast.

19 Dec 2003 | Darrel said...

facts get in the way of making news entertaining.

19 Dec 2003 | Michael Spina said...

There are even discrepencies within one source. The Yahoo! Reuters story (which says 60 stories) features a photo/graphic that says "70 floors of office space" They can't even come up with a consistent guess.

19 Dec 2003 | Mark Fusco said...

It's funny that some of these news articles also pronounce that the new tower will make it the tallest structure in the world. However, doing a little research, it's not even agreed on by architects what should be measured in determining a buildings stature.

It could be either -

Height to the structural or architectural top.
Height to the highest occupied floor.
Height to the top of the roof.
Height to the top of antenna.

All depends on how you look at it.

19 Dec 2003 | Tim said...

The "Freedom Tower."

Does that imply it was originally named the "French Tower?"

19 Dec 2003 | pb said...

You might be nit-picking here. The press release says there are "approximate 60 stories" of office space, there's a base with some shopping and atriums, some concourse levels, a restaurant at the top, an observation deck at the top, a tower, some below ground levels for parking and transportation, etc.

How to determine the tallest building might sound obvious but it isn't.

It's a complicated workd out there, folks. Might want to get used to it. I'm a bit more turned off when people nit-pick at less relevant details.

20 Dec 2003 | Mike said...

What I hate is when the reporter does a several minute opinion piece and doesn't get the simplest of facts right. I was listening to NPR the other day and some woman was going off on Roy Horn's cell phone touchdown celebration.

This thing was on TV and video highlights were shown round the clock, but you could tell she never watched it. It was clear in the video he didn't call anyone, he pretended to punch a couple keys, held the phone to his ear, he accidently closed it, opened it again, didn't say a thing, didnt even move his mouth then hung up all in about 4 seconds. Yet she reported that he called his family and talked to his mom to celebrate his touchdown. Uhh... yeah...good job there.

20 Dec 2003 | pb said...

Uhmm...it's "Joe" Horn.

21 Dec 2003 | Mike said...

See... isn't that annoying!!

21 Dec 2003 | pb said...

Yes, very. Much more so because you were bagging on people making trivial mistakes.

22 Dec 2003 | Mike said...

My point with the reporter wasn't so much that she got the detail wrong it was that getting that detail wrong pointed out she hadn't even seen the clip, yet did a several minute piece about it.

I don't believe the mistake was trivial, in fact i thought it was an important part of the story. I made an error in his name, but I'm not reporting on NPR and I didn't prepare notes for my commment. Either way I think that if you report something you should get the overall facts correct.

Choosing which details are less relevant or trivial is based upon an opinion. What someone thinks is relevant will often vary from person to person depending how they look at something. Overall though someone disseminating information should have the responsibility to check the facts and report them correctly. Opinions and assumptions should be left for editorials.

22 Dec 2003 | pb said...

I sort of understood what the point was (well, not really), but it was at best lost on me and at worst I formed the opposite opinion because you didn't even get the player's name correct.

22 Dec 2003 | David Wertheimer said...

Actually, those sources may not be inaccurate. I can't dig up the article that taught me this, but the stories and floors of a building are not the same. The height of a building dictates the number of stories it contains, whereas the floors are physical manifestations within the building. Thus one number measures height while the other measures space.

In Manhattan, at least, this leads to all sorts of games. The Trump residence on First Avenue touts its 78-story height--and labels its elevator stops to match--even though there are only 58 floors in the building (I think they start the upper elevators at 37 or some such). No doubt some p.r. flack tried to push the 70-story number while other news sources opted to say "60 floors" instead.

The 60-versus-63-floors discrepancy may be due to inclusion/exclusion of retail floors, garage space, etc.

23 Dec 2003 | Daniel Burka said...

In regards to Steven Garrity's post above: Today's headlines on Salon from the AP have both "Calif. quake kills two, injures dozens" and "Three dead in California quake". The headline with three deaths was posted before the two deaths headline.

23 Dec 2003 | Don Schenck said...

Simple; it's the rush to "Scoop".

12 Jan 2004 | Sean Devine said...

If you like analysis of discrepancies in the reporting of everyday news, you should really make a habit of reading "Today's Papers" on Slate Magazine. I've been reading it (almost) daily for years and I love how they point our the differences in coverage between the major papers. If I remember correctly, they cover The New York Times, The Washington Post, the USAToday, the LATimes and The Wall Stree Journal. If only they provided a syndicated version of the column...