Sometimes the press release is more accurate. There have been examples in the UK when something released by the Office for National Statistics[1] is looked at and interpreted by a journalist. Unfortunately statisticians get the numbers right and journalists don't, and so reporters make very dramatic statements that just aren't supported by the numbers.

[1] (http://www.statistics.gov.uk/hub/index.html)

Though in our defense, there are also plenty of times when the numbers are wrong and journalists are right.

After performing a basic checksum, we contacted the UN to get a clarification on their firearm-homicides report discrepancy (their A + B should have been equal to C, but wasn't in some cases.) Their response was to basically manually correct column C without ever explaining why it was off. That shook our confidence in their collection and analysis methodology.

State department nonimmigrant visa statistics for the past decade has plenty of numbers for T-2, T-3, T-4, T-5 visas (about 1,500) but only zeroes for T-1. Problem? Description of "T-2" through 5 is "Spouse of T-1", "Child of T-1", "Parent of T-1" and "Unmarried siblings of T-1". So if these are dependents of the visa holders, what happened to T-1's? After pursuing this, we received no comment and hit a dead-end. Somewhat understandably, as T-1 description is a sensitive topic: "T-1: Severe human trafficking informants."

Which is why I include statistics.gov.uk in my UK section of http://jkl.io/ I think we can get around more than just churnalism if people have direct access to academic, state, NGO and partisan materials without journalistic intermediaries. It's niche, in that not everyone is going to read such a site, but important I think.

Agreed. Also, this tool seems to be more about raising questions about context rather than a litmus test for plagiarism. As the author wrote, "Although such quotations are not examples of churnalism per se, Devine says that that information will be helpful to readers too, showing them the context a quote appeared in, and giving them the chance to think about why a reporter selected a particular passage from all of the others."