Abstract
The conventional wisdom among many computer-assisted reporting (CAR) educators is that it is an area of journalism informed by the methodology of United States journalism professor Phillip Meyer and something he dubbed "precision journalism". In a 1973 book Precision Journalism: A Reporters Introduction to Social Science Methods, Meyer explained that precision journalism was a quantitive approach which employed social science methods to gather statistics for news stories. As CAR emerged and developed in the United Sates during the 1990's respected researchers including Bruce Garrison, Brant Houston and Margaret DeFleur were generous in their praise of Meyer. Garrison, for example, credited Meyer with being the "father" of CAR. Houston described him as a "first generation CAR journalist" and an "inspiration". Margaret DeFleur built her PhD around Meyer's work. Little wonder then that Meyer is currently described on the National Institute of Computer-Assisted Reporting (NICAR) website as a guru. However, while examining methodological issues during my own PhD research into relationships between CAR, levels of Freedom of Information and legal constraints such as defamation laws in different nations, another picture emerged. It indicated that while some of Meyer's work with statistics was valuable, his methodology was confused. Some of the flaws are obvious, yet like the emperor's non-existent new clothes in the Hans Christian Anderson fable, they have been ignored.