Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Misadventures in newspaper publishing

More evidence for the Stratford Theory of Numbers. The Herald reports that:  
Drinking water flowing to almost one in six New Zealanders either failed to reach Ministry of Health (MOH) standards or escaped testing during 2007/08, the ministry says.
It has released its annual drinking water quality review , conducted by the Institute of Environmental Science and Research.  
So I did what I do and went to the source, the Ministry of Health website, and downloaded the full report, a 2MB PDF. Cambridge gets a tick, as does the children’s school which, being a country school, is probably on its own supply. Phew. The report was published in June (the file was created on 10 May and last modified on 17 June) so why it is suddenly news?

But the evidence for my theory is this: the report is not for 2007/08, but for 2008/09. Herald journalists can’t even cut and paste from a MOH press release without screwing up a number.

Stuff got the date right, printed a lot more data, and even added a comment from Labour’s water spokesman Brendon Burns who said the June report had been “buried”. Isn’t it his job to bring it to our attention?

1 comment:

Chad Taylor said...

I did wonder when I saw that headline. I trust Auckland's water was alright - for what Watercare charges it should be delivered by butler.