“Default Position Should Be Skepticism” and other advice for data journalists
Skepticism requires an unlimited amount of work for verifying a chain of evidence, if one piece is wrong then the whole body of data could be unless. Not easy for a data journalist to standup and get a new set of data when there's a time constraint.Even an average person isn't even going to spend the morning verifying a weather report demanding more data for an accurate prediction. Instead they'll elect individuals which they trust. And it's unfortunate that they're either wrong, corrupted or exploited.Even today I can't even watch my old favorite youtubers without being pitched some VPN, Web hosting or audiobook service. I feel the people I trust for entertainment have been compromised to say and act a certain way to make some corporate CEO happy who is manipulate numbers so some data journalist can come to some incorrect conclusion about the world and award him some approval rating.