The Chron once again showed it was very good at borrowing stories from the AP. Almost the entirety of the Trayvon Martin murder coverage was AP articles posted on the Houston Chronicle's site. However, I did find a few articles by Chron reporters linking the coverage back to Texas.

Apparently the University of Texas student newspaper, the Daily Texan, posted an editorial cartoon depicting the Trayvon Martin case. In the cartoon, the Daily Texan referred to Trayvon Martin as a "colored boy" sparking outrage and protest among many in Texas. The cartoon depicted "a woman in a chair labeled "the media," telling an open-mouthed child, "And then..... the big, bad white man killed the handsome, sweet, innocent colored boy!!" The Chron reporter, Peggy Fikac, was pretty unbiased in her reporting, noting apologies from the cartoonist, the school and gave coverage to the outrage is caused among many.

While the cartoon was made to criticize the media's coverage of the event, which the comic clearly thought was biased an unjust, there was a considerable backlash at the University of Texas. Although I do believe the comic is racist, should we be up in arms over it? The first amendment allows for freedom of speech, which is clearly what this cartoonist was using. While I don't agree with her views, I do think it is important that we listen to everybody in this situation, and we do consider both sides of the story. It was a terrible thing what happened to Trayvon Martin, but that should not get in the way of good journalism. A more proper response would be an article focusing on the over-zealous shooter, and perhaps the racism that still exists in America.

Tuesday, our class had the pleasure of hosting Marquette Law School pollster Charles Franklin.  Franklin has been recently brought on by the law school to conduct a political election poll for the upcoming state and federal elections, and to gauge voter identification within the state. While he did not get into his poll at Marquette specifically, Franklin spoke a lot towards his extensive history in polling and the benefits of polling to understand a variety of issues (most notably the upcoming election).

Franklin began teaching at Washington University-St. Louis and at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Having an extensive history in polling, Franklin and a partner started the polling website pollster.com which has since became an entity of the Huffington Post, once they bought it from him. He had some very important and interesting insights unto polling:

For one, Franklin stated that polling sponsored and paid for by political candidates, contrary to public opinion, are relatively accurate. Given a 5% margin of error (2.5% each way, Dem-Rep.) the polls were extremely accurate on their trend lines. Polling may differ from the questions asked and the way they are presented however. If a pollster is looking for a specific result, he demonstrated how easy it was to manipulate a poll in order to make it more favorable to that outcome. Franklin noted that the most accurate polls however gauge voter opinion from the most unbiased questions possible. This includes presenting an issue equally and in the most straightforward way.

While I was extremely interested in the political polling conducted by Franklin, I did not want to admit to him that at the moment, I'm not all too concerned about his political polls. The most important poll to me at the moment is an Espn.com poll which shows us that 66% of the country thinks Marquette Men's Basketball team will beat the University of Florida's team in the Sweet 16 round of the March Madness tournament. Let's hope these polls are just as accurate as Franklin claims!

I realize that I'm supposed to report about The Houston Chronicle, yet, it seems that all their coverage comes right from the AP. However, I must say, the AP has really stepped up their game for Super Tuesday. The aforementioned interactive graphic on the Chron's website has updated with not only every Super Tuesday election result, but the current standings of each candidate and their delegate count. 

If you are a reader of the Houston Chronicle, I'm hard-pressed to believe you even know there is a primary election afoot. The Chron has once again surpassed my expectations on how poorly they can report on an election. For starters, their homepage has absolutely nothing about elections, or for that matter- politics. You have to go under the "news" tab to navigate to the "politics" page. Here, you will find a pretty cool graphic that the site borrowed from the AP detailing the race and candidates. However, they must have paid through the nose with this one, because it has been a center-piece (and really their only) coverage of the election since my last post. They have updated the races, detailing how each candidate did in Arizona and Michigan, but aside from that it remains much the same.

As far as looking towards "Super Tuesday" the Chron is a little mixed up between the election and "Fat Tuesday". Below is one of the many pictures that pops up when you type in "Super Tuesday" in the seach box on their website. Well, at least we know what the priorities are for the people of Houston.

Congrats Houston Chronicle, you've done it.