Article • Dean Baker’s Beat the Press
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The paper must have assumed everyone knew the answer to this question since it didn’t bother to put these budget numbers in any context, like expressing them as a share of the total budget. These numbers appeared in an article on the fiscal situations of states this year.
Incredibly, the article threw out numbers for budget shortfalls and gave readers no context whatsoever. While the Post undoubtedly has a well-educated readership, it is not likely that many are familiar with the relative sizes of different state budgets.
The Post’s reporter could have taken five minutes to look up these numbers. This would have made it possible to tell readers that Kansas’ $1 billion shortfall is a bit more than 4 percent of its $24 billion budget, while Pennsylvania’s $1.8 billion gap is a bit more than 1.3 percent of its $130 billion budget.
Is there some reason that a reporter can’t spare the few minutes necessary to write these numbers in a way that would make them meaningful to most of the people who read them? Is there some reason that the Post’s editors don’t demand they put numbers in context rather than writing numbers that are meaningless to almost everyone who reads them?