By Brother Bradley J. Fikes, C.O.R.
Did you know that environmentally friendly “green jobs” grew nationally from 1998 to 2007 by 9.1 percent, while the growth rate of all jobs was just 3.7 percent during the same period?
That’s what a study from the Pew Charitable Trusts found, as dutifully reported by the Associated Press. Trouble is, the numbers are wrong.
Follow the link over to BizzyBlog’s detailed explanation of what’s wrong with the study.
The explanation begins with an insight that apparently never went off in the heads of the AP reporters: “Sometimes the numbers in a wire service report are so ridiculous, you just know that they’re bogus.”
People who have some savvy with numbers can often tell that a number is wrong because it just doesn’t make sense. In this case, a total job growth rate of 3.7 percent for the entire decade is far too low to make any sense. That decade encompassed two economic booms and a mild recession. The U.S. population increased by about 11 percent during that time, according to census figures. And indeed, official employment growth during that period is far higher than what the Pew study said.
As Tom Blumer points out on BizzyBlog, Pew’s numbers come from a private company, not publicly available data. And there is no attempt by the AP to reconcile the vastly differing numbers, or indeed, any sign the AP reporters are even aware of a discrepancy.
The AP and other news organizations are frantically trying to get online readers to pay for their stories. They’re discussing all sorts of high-tech business models to this end. But how can they succeed when they let info-garbage like this get published?
UPDATE: One of the problems with the Associated Press is its new pretensions to being the great arbiter of truth or falsity, especially in political matters. That’s dangerous territory for any news organization when that news organization has problems with basic fact-checking.
Although I’m but a mere reporter, I think I speak for a lot of editors when I say AP needs to spend more time on making sure its reporters sniff out smelly data, and less time on pretentious agenda-setting.
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As with everything I write here, this is my personal opinion, and not necessarily that of my employer, the North County Times.
Tags: business
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You might want to see the pathetic response from Pew in the comments.
You also might want to contact me if there is serious interest in monitoring AP systematically. Someone needs to do it.
Tom
Oh, I see great minds think in synchronicity. :–>
Tom,
I just emailed you about the idea of monitoring AP systematically. It’s a great idea, and I’d like to help. More details in the email.