Waugh missed this
A major aspect of journalistic stupidity that Waugh didn't parody is innumeracy. Probably because Waugh was a non-mathy type himself and couldn't see the problem.

Two excellent examples in today's online news.

(1) A list of real estate averages by month in today's Spokane paper online. The list runs up to July of 2013 (last month) but only runs back to June 2012. This means you can only make two month vs month comparisons, so the list is pretty much useless. (Real estate is highly seasonal, and the only way to determine an actual increase is by comparing this Jan with last Jan, this Feb with last Feb, etc.)

(2) Apparently triggered by the synthetic-beef craze, a peculiar map in UK Guardian showing per capita meat consumption. Many countries are missing, including US and Russia. Most of the missing-data countries are shown in gray, but Russia is simply erased from the map. No excuse for the missing data: I was able to find a complete map in 10 seconds. Obviously the Guardian journalists didn't notice the absent Russia and didn't stop to ask if better maps were available. Those problems simply don't exist in JournalistBrain. A map is a sort of abstract painting with shapes and colors, but it's not signed by a Fashionable Communist Painter, so there's no way to think about it.


= = = = =

Random observation halfway circling back to Waugh.... These mental defects are consistent over many decades among UK/US journalists, but they are NOT common to all countries. African and Arab journalists and broadcasters seem to be well-rounded adults who can handle a variety of cultural, political, scientific and numerical subjects rationally and objectively. I enjoy listening to Savile's "Fifth Floor" program, which is a semi-casual discussion among broadcasters from those parts of the world. It never raises my blood pressure and I always learn something new. Casual discussion programs among US/UK journalist types, by contrast, are intensely aggravating. Brain-damaged toddlers endlessly repeating tired infantile insults. On the rare occasions when they even mention a fact, it's 100000000% backwards on top of backwards on top of backwards, too far beyond wrong to be called "not even wrong".

Wonder how it happened? Presumably third-world journos learned some aspects of the trade from Euro and American media, but they failed to pick up the accompanying idiocy. Did they consciously decide to break the mold, or are they just better people to start with?
  ¶ 3:57 AM