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WaPo immigration-law trend story misses mark

By Mark Obbie

Karen Bruillard and her editors at the Washington Post should have taken a closer look at this trend story today, to avoid the trap that they have fallen into. It's a familiar trap for journalists who suspect their story is true and timely, but they either lack the energy or the luck to prove it convincingly. Here's Bruillard's nut graf on what the headline claims is a "rush" by law students to handle immigration cases:The problems begin with the phrase "three decades ago." Nowhere does the story return to that point of reference. The story is slightly more successful at providing anecdotes that support the notion that there's a boom. But Bruillard's evidence to support the claims in the second sentence -- about who's teaching the classes, how many take them, and the growth of immigration clinics and student groups -- is sketchy at best, and sometimes (in the case of who's teaching the classes) never mentioned again. Part of the problem, which Bruillard mentions three grafs after the nut, is that "there are no statistics on the number studying immigration law." Assuming that is true no matter how hard a reporter worked it, that should not automatically nix the story. Where, after all, would we journalists be if we took an all-or-nothing approach to stories that can't be nailed down with scientific certainty but have ample evidence to suggest they are true? The trouble with this immigration law story, though, is that the evidence falls short of ample.

Full post as published by Lawbeat on July 07, 2008 (boomark / email).