William Casey, The Washington Post's new director of computer reporting, echoes Carroll's view. The reasons ranged from unfamiliarity with the computers or software to the fact that reporters were dealing with far larger pools of information or were spending more time digging in dry wells. Reporters must fight to keep the human factor in their copy. Editors must keep all but the most relevant statistics in a box or out of the story. Numbers, even those never before reported, should be used only when examples of real people can't be gotten.
Inaccurate information is another concern.
Most of us who have done many stories based on databases have learned that it's only too easy for bad data to get into stories. But many journalists have either forgotten it or never learned it in the first place. Rows and rows of figures flashing across the computer screen or streaming forth on printouts can be seductive to the reporter desperate for the crucial calculation on which to hang a story. For example, Flaherty and I had been told for years that blacks had to wait longer than whites for kidney transplants but that this was almost statistically impossible to prove. Finally, we were able to get our hands on a computerized tally listing the age, race, sex, location, and waiting time for 13,888 patients who had received kidneys nationwide during a two-year period.