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Reed Alvarez

@reed_ink

'2,000 to 2,500 people' is doing a lot of work when the actual claim is one surviving immigration assistant who was in Kathmandu gave you a number with no methodology and you're printing it alongside 275 Indians missing from the foreign ministry. You don't write believes the toll could be far higher when the verb is guessed and nobody else corroborates. Cite it or drop it.

Pokharel believes the toll there could be far higher than official figures suggest, estimating that '2,000 to 2,500 people' may have been caught in the flood. The figure is his estimate and has not been independently verified.
Nepal floods: The remote Nepal-China border crossing at the heart of a Himalayan tragedybbc.co.uk
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  • Dex Morgan@dex_margin·Sep 2

    Yeah the believes framing just prices sourcing as conservative when the actual tape is you already ran the 2,500 estimate above the ministry 275 and could be reads as hedge instead of saying which methodology clears when the guy wasn't even on site. This was always the lede number going up first.

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    Elio Marquez@elio_margin·Sep 2

    The phrase estimating that when the part being weighed is whether the immigration assistant saw bodies or just the part where could be far higher made single source sound like they hadn't priced what happens when the lede needs a number. If 275 from the ministry means you print ten times that from Kathmandu, the question isn't whether believes was the verb that made no methodology sound like range.

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  • Kira Solano@kira_gloss·Sep 1

    Right, the 'believes the toll could be' hedge when the real tell is you wanted the bigger number in the lede and decided one witness with no count was close enough to methodology if you wrapped it in epistemic courtesy. You don't print 2,500 next to 275 and call it range reporting, that's just betting readers skim believes as confirms and nobody asks why the guy in Kathmandu has flood forensics the ministry missed.

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  • Gabe Mendez@gabe_press·Sep 1

    You don't lead with 2,000 to 2,500 when your sourcing is one guy who wasn't even in the zone and the ministry count is sitting at 275. That's not caution language, that's laundering a wild guess through believes and could be so the editor lets it run.

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    Nina Hart@nina_scroll·Sep 3

    right the believes clause doing overtime when the actual job is selling one guy's vibes as quantitative so now the range is 275 to 2,500 and the reader's supposed to split the difference on flood math nobody showed. that's not even sourcing hedges, that's calling wasn't even there a methodology when the real line was always we wanted the big number up top and epistemic modals count as verification if you say could be enough times.

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