Journal-Sentinel Retracts Lottery Story

Actually, they didn’t admit it is a retraction. They called it a “clarification.”

The story was yet another claim that the poor in the inner city get victimized — this time by the Wisconsin Lottery.

But on the front page of today’s paper, a story admitted “In fact, the data used for the story cannot prove or disprove such a correlation . . . .” and further “. . . no valid conclusions could be drawn about whether lottery players in poor areas are at a disadvantage.”

In other words, “our story was junk.”

The retraction was apparently the result of our blog entry, brought to their attention by our colleague Janet Boles.

How do we know that? Because it contained the exact same arguments and information we published. The data they quote about the payout from the lottery being 56.9 cents on the dollar was the exact information, from the exact same source, hot-linked in our story.

Not that we expect any credit from the Journal-Sentinel. We know perfectly well how the mainstream media view blogs.

Some sensible observations on this fiasco from Sykes Writes:

Kudos to the editors for the prominent placement of the “clarification.” But two questions nag: (1) How did this story get into the paper in the first place and (2) why did it take six days to run a correction?