The Needle and the Damage Done
It doesn’t take much to turn supposedly “objective” data journalism into flawed, rank speculation, as anyone closely following the whipsawing Election Night media narrative on Tuesday can attest.
Nate Silver Didn’t Fit In at the New York Times Because He Believed in the Real World
Nate Silver’s failure to fit in with the culture of the New York Times illustrates the difference between objectivity and “objectivity”–the latter being the belief that it’s impossible to know what’s real, so all you can do is report the claims made by various (powerful) people.
Has Nate Silver Ruined Campaign Journalism?
The presence of reliable projections should free journalists to do the kind of issues-based reporting that could actually help voters.
I Predict Dana Milbank Will Continue to Personify False Balance
After establishing that Karl Rove is a terrible political prognosticator, Dana Milbank did the false-balance thing and attacked polling blogger Nate Silver,
Politico Makes You Glad Election Is Almost Over
The gossipy, horse race-obsessed outlet Politico ran a story on October 29 about the credibility of polling expert Nate Silver, whose 538 blog at the New York Times is a must-read for people interested in election forecasting. What Silver does isn’t, on one level, all that tricky–his model combines national and state polls and generates probabilities […]
