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Data Mining Rescues Investigative Journalism
Posted by
kdawson
on Sun Jan 04, 2009 04:49 PM
from the radical-transparency dept.
from the radical-transparency dept.
John Mecklin sends in word of initiatives through which the digital revolution that has been undermining in-depth reportage may be ready to give something back, through a new academic and professional discipline known as "computational journalism." "James Hamilton, director of the DeWitt Wallace Center for Media and Democracy at Duke University, is in the process of filling an endowed chair with a professor who will develop sophisticated computing tools that enhance the capabilities — and, perhaps more important in this economic climate, the efficiency — of journalists and other citizens who are trying to hold public officials and institutions accountable. The goal: Computer algorithms that can sort through the huge amounts of databased information available on the Internet, providing public-interest reporters with sets of potential story leads they otherwise might never have found. Or, in short, data mining in the public interest."
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Submission: Data mining rescues investigative journalism by Anonymous Coward
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Tools won't help with journalistic integrity... (Score:5, Insightful)
OSS won't help with equatorial toilets. (Score:2)
Oh I'm sure some OSS will come out to put an anti-spin to their spin using some of the same data mining they're using.
Even without the spin ... (Score:2)
The question is more along the lines of "what is a journalist".
Right now, it seems that a transcription machine meets the criteria. The current "journalists" simply do not ask (and follow up on) meaningful questions. They ask crap questions and focus on non-issues. And then they accept non-answers to those questions.
I'd be very surprised if the majority (51%+) of "political" "journalists" could even name their own Congress Critters.
And tech "journalism" is even worse.
About the only fields where they get it
Bingo (Score:2)
It doesn't matter how efficient journalistic gum-shoeing becomes, because the end product will still be subject to a certain amount of spin by the publisher.
The only thing that will save "journalistic integrity" is the journalism field adhering to openly stated ethical principle and practices. No amount of technology is going to fix that problem.
so does this mean.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:so does this mean.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:1)
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Out of sight, out of mind...
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What it means is that state and local legislators will start making data illegal or expensive to obtain. This has already happened. In Kansas there is now a fee for motor vehical records. That's because a local reporter ran the motor vehicle records of school bus drivers and reveled how many offenses they have. This was so embarrasing that they made a fee to make it cost prohibative to datamine AND they spun off the school bus business to a private company that is not subject to public review (legally).
But
That's all well and good (Score:5, Insightful)
But as it is, we can't get local news media to perform their "watchdog" role in most cases. I can't even begin to count the number of times when I've seen a case that looked suspicious as hell based on the reporting of it, but the local media just parroted the police/prosecutor's story and moved on. Alternatively, when they do get involved, it's often in cases like the Jena 6 where you end up finding out that the media was spreading disinformation and building up a narrative to make more profit.
Most news media have become a combination of an AP outlet and a source of editorials and classifieds. They're like a primitive RSS feed with some mashed up content thrown in there for local flair.
Journalistic freedom is only theoretical (Score:5, Insightful)
The journalists groom their resources and need to keep in their sources good books to keep up access. Play ball and you get indented with a patrol so you can send back gripping combat footage. Piss off the brass and you get indented with the guys washing trucks at the transport park.
It is no wonder that editors and TV execs are quick to fire and distance themselves from any journalists that forget this and start snooping too deeply. Just look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Arnett [wikipedia.org]
Parent
Blogger freedom is only theoretical (Score:2)
"Journalism is not about reporting the truth, it is about contributing to and competing in an advertising and entertainment industry."
Which by your definition bloggers will never be journalists.
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Journalism is not about reporting the truth, it is about contributing to and competing in an advertising and entertainment industry.
Your observations are valid but incorrectly attributed. You are confusing journalism with publishing.
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to be fair, what you're describing is the media industry, not journalism itself. journalism is a trade/discipline that serves a crucial role in a free & democratic society. that it has been bastardized and corrupted by commercial interests does not preclude the existence of true journalism which is based on professional integrity and a civic duty to keep the public informed.
what i'm confused about is why the poster accuses the "digital revolution" of undermining in-depth reportage. there's a huge differ
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It may be true that what you called 'monopoly of main stream outlets' is bad for quality of journalism, this quality is not improved however by multiplying the number of outlets. If anything the quality went down which has two reasons: people pay no attention to this many sources of information and the sources of information being rubbish as nobody is willing to pay for quality. Another thing which young people in the so called industrialized world may find difficult to believe is that there is non-digitize
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The blogosphere does mean that anyone can become a reporter which makes for a far more democratic medium where you are not censored by an e
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Sure, the really gross stuff is going to get dumped, but the real Machiavellis will engage in propaganda oh so subtly...
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I want to know how you preclude all these shiny-miney algorithms from being tweaked with misinformation.
Who needs misinformation? This will be as useless for the journalists as datamining is for governments, except "Link Discovered Between Illinois Senator Pick and Price of Canned Spinach!" is more entertaining than being "detained" for days while men in black interrogate your boss and coworkers because the computer said so.
In other news... (Score:4, Insightful)
sample top sekret mySQL code from the project (Score:5, Funny)
SELECT *
FROM advertising_revenue_table, list_of_local_business_table
WHERE advertising_revenue_table.business_name = list_of_local_business_table.business_name
AND advertising_revenue_table.cost_of_ad_space_purchased = 100
AND list_of_local_business_table.owners NOT IN (select names from list_of_publishers_buddies)
ORDER BY cost_of_ad_space_purchased ASC
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You should be shot for using so many underscores.
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Don't re-write history... (Score:3, Insightful)
The digital revolution didn't do-in journalism. That was Watergate. After that, and the Left's orgasm over the idea of reporters taking down presidents, propagandists are now all we have. Remember the 'fight' over which reporter would fly with Obama to Iraq, while no one was fighting to go with McCain all those times he went.
Ask them: "Why be a journalist?"
"To make a difference." is the reply.
By definition, journalists don't "make a difference", they tell a story. Propagandists "make a difference". Just ask Himmler.
It's gotten so bad that, despite all the channels, and all the money-losing newsrooms on cable/satellite TV, the stories all use the same words. It's because the left owns almost all of them.
Some might say this consensus makes them right, but it really doesn't. How many times is Fox News chided because they don't agree? Who's programmed, the TV, or us?
What they leave OUT of a story is just as important as what gets IN.
Until just the other day, Charlie Rose and (I think it was) Dan Rather were discussing Obama. "We don't know anything about him- who are his heroes?"
Meanwhile so much was known about "Joe the plumber" that he could barely get work in his town.
Meanwhile they sent 30+ reporters to scam information in Alaska about Palin, making up things when nothing was available.
But no...two years of investigation on Obama turned up nothing. Not a word on broadcast TV about Bill Ayers (an unrepentant bomber of the Pentagon and murderer who got free on a technicality). Not a word about Obama's heros like Saul Alinsky (sp?) who is so far Left he bumps elbows with Stalin.
These people are not in the periphery; these are people with whom he's tightly tied. But that doesn't matter any more, he's elected. Just remember you asked for it. He'll make history, alright.
But now I suppose, we expect reporters to dig through computer data, and the digital revolution might do something for the industry. Well after being the top radio show host for two decades, they still think Limbaugh is racist. (Not hard to disprove) or fat (that was a decade ago). Yeah, those reporters are really hard working investigators. All they need do is *listen* to the show, and they won't do that.
Journalism suffers from the same thing science does: loss of integrity. "Show me the money". And "vote for my guy". Truth no longer matters to these people, though it should to you.
This 'digital revolution' will do nothing but help THEIR causes, not truth.
So make a falsifiable statement. (Score:2)
From the context, it sounds like you are phrasing that as a negative.
So, make a statement that can be tested as to what, specifically, you believe he will do.
Otherwise you're the same as the people you denigrate.
Truth is a difficult thing. I'l
Re: (Score:2)
Not a word on broadcast TV about Bill Ayers (an unrepentant bomber of the Pentagon and murderer who got free on a technicality).
Being framed by the FBI is a technicality?
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The depressing irony is that propoganda has convinced you that you are immune to propoganda.
It's a two way street. (Score:2)
I think we on the right need to stop crying about the "left wing" media, when, we now have our own media outlets too. We dominate radio, we have a good and growing presence on TV, and our print is expanding while theirs is shrinking.
The fact is, we lost this election because the Republican Party has tried to fuse libertarian economic policies with social conservatism and that plan could not work at a time when libertarian economics is in considerable doubt. The conventional wisdom is that Republicans shou
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McCain was everything that you said the GOP needed and he got destroyed.
The only votes McCain got were the "not Obama" crowd
I was wrong. (Score:2)
McCain was everything that you said the GOP needed and he got destroyed
I was wrong about McCain, but a look at the demographics of this election is illuminating. Free trade cost McCain dearly. Every state that McCain lost is a state that has lost big in free trade, and that includes Virginia and North Carolina. The conventional wisdom is that values don't matter and Republicans should stick to their economic guns, but its just political suicide.
journo's discover google and wikipedia (Score:2)
A lot (most?) TV and print media have well publicised portals for eye witnesses to call in, or send their photos. It's certainly cheaper than having to employ one of your own (or, god forbid, having to pay out for agency or newswire product) to get the pictures for the evening news. Plus, of course, eye witnesses give the impression of "real people" - so it's got to be g
Subject (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not what journalists don't know. It's what they don't report.
And basically people just don't care. Have we decided who to blame for the economy collapse yet? But bathroom foot tapping, wow, that's the shit we have to get to the bottom of it.
Subject...to blame. (Score:2)
It's not what journalists don't know. It's what they don't report.
And basically people just don't care. Have we decided who to blame for the economy collapse yet?
We're working on it. [bbc.co.uk]
Oh bull (Score:5, Interesting)
As someone who does investigative journalism for a living, data mining won't get you squat. Having done it for a living for 5+ years, and being very familiar with data mining, the two so rarely cross paths that it rounds to zero.
Why? Because if it is in minable form, it doesn't take any digging to find. If you can run a google search and get even a tidbit about what you need, you don't need investigative journalism.
Of the stories I have gotten, little ones like the P4 going 64 bits, it never reaching 4GHz, Dell exploding laptops (an assist on that one), and more recently the Nvidia bump cracking problem(s), none of that would have been possible through data mining.
If it is out there, it doesn't need an investigative journalist. If it isn't, than data mining won't help. The end.
-Charlie
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm a grad student and have recently been asked to help out on a research grant proposal for the very same thing. I agree with the point made in the parent post - if its already out there, there's not much investigation needed. Additionally:
1) How will algorithms figure out if a story is relevant? There's no deux ex machina here. It will see if the article has the relevant buzzwords and if it has been released by a reputable source.
2) The buzzword factor kills the algorithm's chances of finding somethi
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The one story I'll note was the options backdating scandal of about a year or two ago. The WSJ found that entirely through mathematical analysis of employee options performance. So sometimes data does turn up interesting things.
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I agree with that, but do you think the person doing the mining decided to mine all option performance for all companies over the course of the last few years, or do you think they were working on a tip/hunch?
The situation you describe is some investigative journalist noticing something, and then using data mining as a tool to verify the issue. I may be wrong on this, but to me, there was a biological program at work that decided what and how to use the silicon program.
That is not to say the mining wasn't v
Data Mining is used (Score:2)
and has been used in at least some news organizations, because more than ten years ago I wrote a data mining program for Crain Communications (publisher of "Crain's New York Business," "Advertising Age," "Pensions & Investments," and "Crain's Chicago Business." They used it to identify trends, which is a crude use of data mining but something used to fill space nonetheless.
So I don't think data mining per se will help citizens and bloggers do more investigative journalism, but the increasing availabili
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Yeah, but the key is simple, did data mining make the story, or did the story get noticed by data mining.
To use your infant mortality example, do you think that someone or a program was poking away at a database, noticed the correlation, and ran with it, or do you think someone had a theory and tested it by data mining? I would be willing to bet it is the latter, IE someone noticed a high rate of infant mortality, and tossed out a bunch of what if queries.
To me, and you very well might differ on this, the i
Just another use (Score:2, Interesting)
Information can be s
leave the data mining to bloggers (Score:3, Insightful)
To me a journalist is someone who provides the raw data. In the "Web 2.0" world (pardon the buzzword), anybody can do the data mining and editorializing, and it's great to be able to read different interpretations of the same data by different people.
This is what happens in the sabermetrics world (i.e. baseball stats analysis). Some source provides the raw data, but people merrily discuss and disagree on its meaning on various blog sites. There is none of this confusing mix of data and biased interpretation that you get in most news reporting nowadays.
If a blog is commercially successful, it will be an incentive to the blogger to dig out more raw data, or rather get a journalist to find him some, as it's not necessarily the same skill.
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I don't know, if all a journalist did was wait for press releases to come to him/her, there wouldn't be much facts and truth uncovered, would it? To me a journalist is someone who actively gathers facts and reports them (and that's a dying breed, maybe that's why our definition of journalism has shifted?). Of course gathering facts is not a neutral and unbiased process (it is natural to tend to look harder for evidence that confirms your own opinion).
The way I see it, the journalists are doing the initial p
Facebook ? (Score:2)
Why bother ? "Journalists" already have access to Facebook and MySpace and they can even hit Wikipedia for a quote now and again. What more do they need to write a sensationalist op-ed ?
They don't even bother harrassing family members for photos anymore - they rip them straight from Facebook. All the pics, family links, likes and dislikes...
Bobby Young (pictured left) died tragically yesterday when...blah..blah..blah. The 8 year old university student, a deeply religious man and devout Jedi, was said t
Thomson Reuters Calais (Score:2, Interesting)
Journalism Still In Decline (Score:3, Insightful)
> a new academic and professional discipline
> known as "computational journalism."
Differing only in complexity but not principle from the same sort of search engine journalism that's resulted in decline of both accountability and accuracy of news over the past decade. Perhaps some investigative journalism into the lack of actual investigation into investigation is in order. "Hits" != veracity.
Crackpottery goes mainstream (Score:3, Insightful)
You may as well rename this, "Crackpottery goes mainstream". Instead of calling a few people, doing a couple of interviews, writing up their impressions as a story, journalists will now have automation to help them do what nuts do. Just like so-called UFO, alien and jfk assassination researchers do manually, journalists will be able to arrange players, dates and events to fit any tale imaginable. Government, UN, corporate, environmental conspiracy stories will abound, and the sky is the limit.
Beware of the NULL search (Score:2)
To support your claim of <insert cause here>, do a search the REQUIRES a lot of words that are descriptive of your opposition. Then, when NO RESULTS are found, you can write that no one opposes your claim of <insert cause here>.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
It means "Clean the red sharpie off your screen".
no red here, btw. :P
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Red means stop and read it, green means go and read it.
Re: (Score:1, Offtopic)
There are now dozens of "why is this red" posts littered throughout /.
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