A somewhat-daily collection of usually short shots pointing out obvious bias, ignorance, and/or lack of expected follow-up by traditional media outlets.

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The August 13 ACT test-score story by Justin Pope of the Associated Press, with its misleading headline (”ACT scores down, but more students college-ready”), papered over two other points of interest beyond the Michigan jaw-dropper I noted yesterday.

The first is in this chart:

ACT, Inc. celebrated the fact that so many more took its test, and that more tested as college-ready. But only 11.44% of the additional test takers tested as college-ready in all four subject areas (English, math, reading, and science). That’s pretty weak.

As noted yesterday, a large part of the reason is that the additional test-taking occurred in states and some individual school districts where the ACT became mandatory in 2008. What the test mandate is revealing is a shocking level of incompetence on the part of those who are not college-bound (not that the performance of the college-bound is anything to get excited about).

The actual “Totals Who Tested as College-Ready in All Four Subjects” figures were not available in ACT, Inc.’s 30-plus page report for either 2008 or 2007 (that seems like a more than minor oversight). Since the college-readiness percentages presented in ACT’s report were rounded to the nearest whole percentage, I thought it important to get the actual numbers who tested college-ready in each year to see if the arbitrary rounding made the results appear better or worse than they really were.

To do that, I picked up Alexander Graham Bell’s invention and got the actual numbers from Scott in ACT’s Media Relations Department. I appreciate Scott’s callback, and his provision of that data. Justin Pope and others at AP, who get paid to report for a living and whose employer pays for long-distance calls, should consider employing this technique every once in a while.

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Yours truly found the second biggie that the AP’s Justin Pope missed in ACT’s 2008 national report.

It’s this “boys are really smarter than girls” engine starter on Page 13 of the full report:

The percentage of males who tested as college-ready in all four subjects (i.e., needing no remedial help) was 37% higher (7 points higher divided by 19) than that of females. Relatively small female advantages in English and reading were blown away by much larger male advantages in math and science.

These stats could keep Joanne Jacobs posting non-stop for a week. :–>

Seriously, though, how many readers expected to see this result? Justin Pope could even have reported this gem without having to pick up the phone.

Yet in 2007, according to this Christian Science Monitor article, “women account(ed) for nearly 58 percent of the 16.6 million college students. In three years (by 2010), the ratio is projected to be around 60 to 40.”

Anyone care to explain this? More fundamentally, why doesn’t anyone care to report this in real time when the result is right there?

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Matt Sheffield of NewsBusters put up a great Washington Times column yesterday (”How Traditional Media Lose Audience to the Web”).

Money quote:

Instead of reporting the news, far too many journalists have now taken it upon themselves to protect the public from it.

Based on how the John Edwards situation has gone down, who can dispute this?

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Speaking of Edwards, Old Media and Democratic party vet (but I repeat myself) Walter Shapiro at Salon, in his “Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye” column, confesses to having been duped.

Walter, Walter — you had seven months after the original revelations to change your assessment and didn’t. You just wanted to believe, and it blinded you.

Shapiro hasn’t changed a bit:

….. in 2000, no writer captured the arrogant megalomania of Dick Cheney or envisioned that Joe Lieberman’s hawkishness would eventually lead him right out of the Democratic Party.

Zheesh — Some of us remember that in 2000, those two gentlemen had a sit-down vice-presidential debate that was more civil and thoughtful than any of the three Bush v. Misbehaving Gore extravaganzas. You could make a case that Cheney and Lieberman were more qualified to be at the top of the ticket that year (Cheney over Bush on experience, Lieberman over Gore by a mile on temperament).

Cheney and Lieberman appear to have changed very little in eight years, but the traditional media treatment of them has created false templates that Shapiro can’t or won’t break through. He’s still blinded by his bias, and has learned nothing from being taken in by Edwards. Traditional Media types who migrate to the web aren’t going to get back their audiences with blindness, and blind bias, like Shapiro’s.

Since they come so fast and furious, I’m thinking that maybe a somewhat daily group of short shots noting examples of media bias might be useful to compile.

We’ll see. Let’s go:

• Only the New York Times (HT NaugBlog) could “cover” late July’s Cuyahoga County, Ohio raids by calling a law enforcement exercise involving 200 G-men an “inquiry” (yes, they used “investigation,” too, but give me a break), and “somehow” overlooking the fact that the county building was raided, not just the homes of Democrats Jimmy Dimora and Frank Russo.
• In an Alice in Wonderland-like report, The Associated Press’s Angus Shaw treats Morgan Tsvangirai, the person who beat Robert Mugabe in a March election, as the guy who’s the barrier between humanitarian basket case Zimbabwe’s current mess and a semi-legitimate power-sharing government with Mugabe. It’s clear that Tsvangirai’s “problem” is that, well, he wants real power. South Africa’s Thabo Mbeki, who has cut Mugabe way too much slack for at least a decade and gotten a free media pass virtually the entire time, says that Tsvangirai needs “more time to reflect.”
• Prediction: Almost no one in traditional media will report Charlie Rangel’s disgraceful and stereotyping remarks about those who oppose amnesty and those who want to actually, like, enforce the immigration laws.
• I’ll bet there could be reports like this one from Chicago all over the country that the Al Gore-loving media won’t do much with, at least not prominently — “August is the wettest and often the muggiest month of the year. Yet, summer heat continues in short supply, continuing a trend that has dominated much of the 21st Century’s opening decade. There have been only 162 days 90 degrees or warmer at Midway Airport over the period from 2000 to 2008. That’s by far the fewest 90-degree temperatures in the opening nine years of any decade on record here since 1930.” The Windy City suffered a disastrous heat wave in 1995, when the temps reached 98 degrees or higher four days in a row, including consecutive days within that period of 106 and 102. An estimated 600 heat-related deaths occurred. There’s still a few weeks left of serious potential heat, but so far this year, That Toddlin’ Town’s highest temperature has been 91.
• Has anyone in traditional media outside of the UK, which thanks to intense competition still has a vibrant press (TV, that’s another matter), ever told us what a joke wind power is (HT Michelle Malkin; original heads-up from e-mailer Dan Scott)? I mean, this would be funny if it weren’t so financially misguided:
  

  James Oswald, an engineering consultant and former head of research and development at Rolls-Royce Turbines, who led the study, said: “Wind power does not obviate the need for fossil fuel plants, which will continue to be indispensable.

  “The problem is that wind power volatility requires fossil fuel plants to be switched on and off, which damages them and means that even more plants will have to be built. Carbon savings will be less than expected, because cheaper, less efficient plant will be used to support these wind power fluctuations.

  “Neither these extra costs nor the increased carbon production are being taken into account in (UK) government figures for wind power.”

  I’ll betcha they aren’t being taken into account here in the US either. T. Boone’s windy idea looks pretty T. Boneheaded.

• Tom Maguire’s nomination for Items Traditional Media Will Ignore: Anything and everything, other than going after a precious a few mistakes (out of what, maybe 5,000 factoids?) in Jerome Corsi’s “The Obama Nation.” Corsi’s book has basically done the work traditional media should have done during the past two years. Complaining about the fact that it’s in essence 99.8% or so accurate is just poor sportsmanship.