Statistician help wanted.

I need a statistician’s help.

But before any of you consider helping me, you deserve to know:

1) Trolls and some reporters and editors at the Raleigh News & Observer say I’m a pretty bad guy. I don’t believe them, but I could be fooling myself;

2) There’ll be no fee for your services

3) Be prepared. I’ll check anything you say with others. I’ll even question your credentials.

Now, are you still interested in “the job?”

You are?

OK, here’s what’s involved: As many of you know, back on Mar. 24 the N&O published on its front page the story it claims “broke the Duke lacrosse story.” (“DNA tests ordered for Duke athletes”)

In it, the N&O referred seven times to the False Accuser as “the victim” or with the possessive “victim’s.”

The N&O never once used standard journalism qualifiers such as “alleged” or “reported” which alert readers to the fact an accuser’s claim(s) is disputed and unproven.

By leaving out qualifiers in the story in which the public and media first learned of “the Duke lacrosse case,” the N&O cast the False Accuser as the victim and framed the Duke students as her victimizers.

Most of the blame for that travesty of honest and accurate journalism has fallen on Samiha Khanna and Anne Blythe, the two reporters bylined on the story.

However, a number of N&O editors worked on the story. Regardless of their particular editorial assignments, all of them were, as the N&O’s exec editor for news Melanie Sill often tells readers, responsible for identifying and correcting errors.

Now here’s where I need statistical help.

Journalists familiar with how a paper like the N&O operates have given me their best estimates of the number of editors who likely worked on the Mar. 24 story. The lowest number given was six; the highest was ten.

I'll use six as a "working number."

If six editors each fact-check seven items, each of which has an error, and none of the editors note any of the errors, that makes a total of forty-two errors that weren’t noted.

My question for statisticians: What is the probability that all six newspaper editors would miss by chance all seven instances in the N&O story where the N&O failed to use a qualifier such as “alleged” or “reported?”

Folks, I believe the N&O made a deliberate decision to not use qualifiers in its Mar. 24 story; and instead tell the public and media the False Accuser was a victim of sex crimes.

Whether reporters Khanna and Blythe were part of that decision we don’t know for certain. Editors often change reporters’ copy.

I doubt editors would “pencil out” qualifiers but with the N&O we can’t always be sure. Who would have thought the N&O would have withheld from its Mar. 25 story all the news it had of the players cooperation with police and instead promulgate the lie that the players were stonewalling and refusing to cooperate with police?

What we do know for sure is that editors, even N&O editors, are supposed to identify and correct errors. I believe forty-two or possibly more errors of the type we’re talking about here didn’t happen by chance or because of “deadline pressure.”

Exposing the N&O’s deliberate errors in its Duke lacrosse coverage is the essential first step to getting the N&O to eventually correct and apologize for what it did in its Mar. 24 story, “DNA tests ordered for Duke athletes.”