http://www.foxnews.com/politics/first100days/2009/04/01/obama-tries-rally-world-cope-downturn/
Foxnews is one of the three news sites I always like to scroll through, part of the "the Holy Triumvirate" if you will.
Although traditionally republican and mainstream conservative, I've seen quality, fair journalism come out of there from time to time.
This article however, was not one of them.
The AP writer made very strange and seemingly inaccurate assumptions including saying that President Obama "had no worries about the stability of the U.S. economic system." Given the state of the economy the sentence seemed utterly ridiculous, but it was enough to spur over a hundred comments from readers who felt after reading the article that the President was out of touch. It's amazing how one sentence can spur on an entire mass of people.
In journalism as well as any kind of writing really it's always important to choose your words carefully. This is just one example of how a misleading sentence can ruin the objectivity of an entire article.
Reflection
I've heard stories since I've arrived at the MU School of Journalism that sometimes, on rare occasions, the perfect story will fall into a reporters lap. I have always been skeptical as this sounds more like an unrealistic dream than anything else, but this past week I became a believer.
Last week was Spring Break but unlike most of my fellow classmates I stayed in Columbia. My girlfriends roommates boyfriend (sounds like some kind of weird Star Wars parallel but it's true) was over at her house and stopped me at one o'clock in the morning.
"Hey Shane," he said. "Have you heard about Hank?"
Unknowingly I shook my head..."He has been hounded by ESPN and CBS for the past week because he still has a perfect bracket."
To some this news may not have been much, but to me it was a hard-stopping/unbelievable revelation. I had too filled out a bracket and like all of the other millions of people in the world had seen it crumble. ESPN announced the night before on Sportscenter that to their knowledge not a single perfect bracket remained on any website and it made sense. The probability of that happening was so small it seemed almost comical. However, when I logged onto Facebook Hank Sherman did indeed have a perfect bracket and a colt-like following to go along with it.
The next day Hank I was the first of any news-outlet to interview Hank and the next evening I watched the Sweet 16 with him as part of a feature. Although the situation may never happen again in my career, the opportunity was one that was literally handed to me and even though it was a mostly uneventful break I'm glad I stayed in Columbia because the story would not have been possible had I been somewhere else.
MU Student Holds Only Remaining Perfect Bracket
When the Missouri Tigers recently played Memphis in the NCAA Mens sweet sixteen basketball tournament, MU student Hank Sherman had more on the line than just his school spirit.
Going into the game Sherman held the only known perfect bracket in the world.
Every year millions of people fill out brackets to predict the winners of every game in the men’s NCAA tournament.
Sherman had defied the odds by correctly picking the first 50 games of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament.
To remain perfect, Sherman’s bracket depended on victories from MU and Duke. By halftime MU had a comfortable 13 point lead but Duke trailed by 3 to Villanova.
Sherman says he was surprised by how well MU was playing, but the Duke game was a bit of a concern.
“I’m feeling pretty safe after the first half. I can’t believe we’ve been trouncing Memphis like we have been,” Sherman said. “Are you worried about the Duke game? A little bit. Yeah. Definitely worried about them.”
Statisticians calculated that Sherman had already overcome odds of around one in six quadrillion to have a perfect bracket after two rounds. The odds of anyone having a completely perfect bracket are so unlikely, that if every man, woman, and child on the planet randomly filled out 10 million brackets each, the odds would be LESS than 1% that even one person would have a perfect bracket.
Sherman’s close friend and fellow MU student Ben Rodgers watched the MU game with Sherman.
“It’s kind of impossible, I don’t know,” Rodgers. “It’s unbelievable. It blows my mind.”
Rodgers was not the only one who was in awe of Sherman’s bracket. After each correct pick, thousands of people commented on Sherman’s online Facebook bracket referring to Sherman as “the Oracle” and “God incarnate.” Andy Greeley from the University of Minnesota referred to Sherman as “the Sherminator” while Kevin Fitzpatrick from Providence University said “This dudes from the future.”
As Mizzou came out strong in the second half Sherman remained optimistic.Yet, as Mizzou was pulling ahead Duke fell further behind. As the games began to wrap up Sherman’s dream was about to come to an end.
“It’s 73-54 Villanova right now with a minute eighteen left so it looks like your brackets busted,” Sherman said. “However, your team and your school is moving onto the Elite Eight for the first time since 2002. How are you feeling? Totally bittersweet. I’m pretty upset with Duke right now just basically falling apart. They weren’t even in this game it seemed like.”
Although his 15 minutes of fame are up, Sherman says Mizzou advancing to the Elite Eight still gave him plenty of reason to celebrate and the experience is one he will never forget.
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