![]() ![]() The piece addressed online news, primarily, but his conclusion is directly on point. Stein's column, "Fast-Paced Journalism's Neglect of Nuance and Context," appears on Harvard University's "Neiman Reports" website, an outlet devoted to excellence in journalism. Political reporter Sam Stein called his job during an election cycle "an unmitigated process of data searches, interview requests, editorial insights, email exchanges, and ultimately deadline-influenced pieces." After all, adding the necessary context to a story is time-consuming, painstaking work. To be fair, Apel isn't the first journalist who failed to provide the relevant context, and she won't be the last. ![]() Without providing readers any of the "whys" for the stats, Apel (and the C-L's editors) turned what could have been a serious, informative article into a self-serving bit of inconsequential fluff. But Apel stopped there, leaving readers with the impression that, of course, gender bias is obvious. That's good information, and it's important within the scope of the exploration. "There have been close to 10,000 executions altogether in the same amount of time." Somewhere around the middle of the piece, Apel provided statistics: "There have been 53 women executed in the United States since 1900, with only four of those being in the last 10 years," she wrote. Putting aside the article's numerous other problems (beginning with its nonsensical headline, "Idea of executing a woman mixed" because, you know, "ideas" are difficult, if not impossible, to "mix"), what the story completely failed to do is provide readers any reason to care. Does the criminal-justice system suffer from gender bias? As part of its coverage of Mississippi's proposed execution of Michelle Byrom, The Clarion-Ledger's Therese Apel wrote a puff piece that ostensibly explored whether the United States reserves its harshest punishment mostly for men. ![]()
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