News-Record.com

Since there is no commenting available on the N&R story, Dick Barron regurgitates Kirkman's proncouncement that the Triad has lost 30,000 jobs since 2000.

That's misleading and should have been better reported. The W-S MSA has seen an net addition of about 15,000 jobs and the Greensboro MSA has seen a net addition of about 33,000 jobs since 2000.

Kirkman may have been couting only losses, but that's as informative as if a man goes to the horse track, loses five $2 bets, wins one for $30 and tells his wife he lost $10.

Why would a person do that if it wasn't to mislead and why won't the N&R fact check the information provided in people's quotes?

Thanks, Roch. It is important to note that jobs are always in flux. You have losses in some sectors, gains in others. The overall trend is upward, although there were some period when net losses were experienced.

But no observations on a speaker at a N&R sponsored event offering misleading data or the faillure of the N&R to fact check his published quote?

Roch, it would be rude to quibble with speakers at an N&R-sponsored event.

However, you make a good point that, arguably, we should fact-check before quoting a speaker in news stories or editorials. I will be writing an article about the One Guilford event for our Oct. 28 Ideas section, and I certainly will do that if I quote Kirkman on the subject of job losses.

On the other hand, I don't know that we'd fact check every statement when reporting on a debate between mayoral candidates, for example. Sometimes you just report and let readers make their own assessments, or respond perhaps in some other way such as an editorial or a blog comment.

That's pretty much what I expected, Doug: Let's have a series of forums to see if we can better unite our communities, but let's not insist on starting from places of factual accuracy because that would be, well, just rude. How productive do you think One Guilford will be when the bar is set so low?

The lack of interest in making sure readers know the facts, of allowing incorrect information to stand uncorrected because it is contained in a quotation is a serious problem at the N&R. The most concerning problem though is that each time it is brought to the N&R's attention, someone makes an excuse for it. Nobody every says, "Yeah, we should stop letting claims and assertions go unchallenged and give our readers the facts."

This is clearly an area where the N&R is doing a poor job. It should be met with something other than a defense of mediocricy.

Roch, I acknowledged your point about the news report. For further redress, I suggest you take your complaint to the news department.

I'm not sure what response you expected at One Guilford. An instant fact check, someone jumping up to challenge Kirkman in the middle of his remarks? Maybe we could have diverted into a debate about the difference between job losses and net job losses.

And, for the record, I do not believe he imparted incorrect information as you now assert. There certainly have been significant job losses in the Triad since 2000. You simply think that figure could have been presented in a different context showing that there have been job gains to offset the losses -- although even that requires context, because many of the new jobs don't equal the lost jobs in terms of pay and benefits. I suppose Kirkman could have spent his entire allotted 10 minutes dealing with these subtleties, but that wasn't even what we asked him to speak about.

"because many of the new jobs don't equal the lost jobs in terms of pay and benefits."

Ignoring your strawmen and red herrings, where do you draw this data from?

You've only imagined strawmen and red herrings.

The basis for my statement is found in Keith Debbage's latest State of the City report.

http://www.actiongreensboro.org/documents/reports/Debbage_Benchmark_Report_II.pdf

I really don't have time today to be more specific.