Posted by Raoul Djukanovic on July 2, 2009, 17:51:42, in reply to "Re: "one would expect a wider spread of sources cited""
My previous post misrepresented itself. I see there is more to say, since you're still under the misapprehension that there's something to say. There's no other way of putting it really.
You wrote:
"If I was to look at 192 news sources daily and treat them all equally in my reporting, I would expect to have a close to equal distribution of news sources citied in my database."
Well, you might, if you were playing a game.
In reality, if the objective is to tally reported deaths, it doesn't matter a jot.
Either they've been reported, and tallied, or they haven't.
And since news wires do the bulk of most other news providers' reporting for them, it's unsurprising that their gargantuan output (unlimited by restrictions on page numbers or bulletin length) contains more of the reported deaths than other sources, which are cited when they report deaths that aren't reported elsewhere.
There is no need to share the distribution around if you're aiming to tally the reported deaths.
I should have thought this was obvious, which was why I suggested you were influenced by a smear campaign (if not mounting one yourself).
You also wrote:
"Personally, I do not have a problem with the majority of incident reported relying on a minority of the 192 sources. It would be good though, if this was clearly communicated."
What possible difference would it make? Who cares? I give up.
Excuse the mock exasperation. It's the Latin weather.
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