On Feb. 15, Washington Post ombudsman Patrick Pexton made a startling statement:
Something fishy in that AP racism story
The Associated Press had a huge story this weekend accusing American voters of racism, but a racism that has increased in the last four years. When people were asked if they were racist, they said no, but when a survey that measures racial preferences via tiny pictures and Chinese characters was used, the racism was found. The subhead at USA Today is “Overall, the survey found that by virtue of racial prejudice, Obama could lose 5 percentage points off his share of the popular vote on Nov. 6.” I’m still working through my thoughts about the story, how it was chosen, what it means that the Associated Press chose to investigate this story, the methodology they used, how they interpreted the results, and so on and so forth. But while digging through the data, I came across something very weird.