Example of Crappy Journalism

Yesterday, I was reading commentary on social media, and this article via the Washington Post came up....on Germany.

So the journalist from the Post wanted to let Americans know that Germany had been doing 'trace' tracking since early on in the Coronavirus situation. 

For those not into the term....'trace' tracking, a simple explanation.  This is where you carry your smart-phone on you, with a special App, and it tracks your 'steps' throughout the day.  If you did bump into a Corona-person, the tracking would lead the health authorities (in principal) to you, and announce that you may have the virus, and that you should do self-quarantine for two weeks. 

The problem with this WaPo article....is that it's basically 100-percent false. 

Yes, there are some geeky guys in Germany working on this (they probably were working on this long before the virus arrived on the front-step). 

Yes, they have done some demonstrations of how it'd work....although this was probably a minimum of six weeks into the virus period.

Yes, some politicians, and even the Health Minister (Spahn) have approached the idea with some degree of accepting development. 

Beyond that....NOTHING.

The problem with privacy laws in Germany, and privacy expectations?  OH YEAH, that came up rather quickly.  A number of high-profile folks felt this was a no-go.  They didn't want the government tracking them.

The idea of just storing the data on the cellphone by itself, and not sharing with a government-run server?  This has been thrown around and appears to be the only way that it'd move onto the next step.  However, the same people discussing this....said that it'd have to be a personal thing if you put the App on your phone, or refused it.

So, how this did WaPo journalist reach this point of saying this was already going on?  Unknown.  I'm only guessing here, but they were probably at some DC party, where a German guest commented on the development, and the journalist got the wrong impression. 

The problem is....this goes out and 100,000 readers of WaPo accept it as fact, and they start quoting this at parties and cafes.  Pretty soon, more than 10-million Americans are hyped-up about this German development with trace-tracking and how they got 83-million Germans to just accept it as 'normal'. 

I point this out, because of the current state of journalism.  As you gaze over some article.....you just start to pull out a red-marker, and start noting questionable comments, non-facts, and crappy explanations.  It's like accepting fifth-grade kids to do adult work.  Four years of college should have led to something positive, and given you motivation to produce quality work.