News » USA Today Drops Ball on Journalism, Prints Garbage Stoned Motorist Story





USA Today’s Chris Woodyard, an automotive reporter, wrote a story titled Legalized marijuana foes warn of more stoned motorists. Ignoring anything resembling objective or even researched reporting, Woodyard instead appears to have used talking points from No on Proposition 19‘s Roger Salazar as the basis for his story.

The one-sided story ignores a simple, basic fact that destroys Salazar’s baseless talking point: studies have shown marijuana is not an impairment to safe driving.

Had so-called reporter Woodyard bothered to even Google the phrases “marijuana driving study” or even just “marijuana driving,” he would have found the study cited above in half a dozen results on the very first page.

Like most mainstream reporters, however, he ignored actual journalism and decided to go with journalism-by-press-release instead. Bravo, Woodyard. Best stick with cars from now on. You’ve proven yourself out of your league otherwise.

For the record, I also cover automotive (alt-fuel and “green” vehicle technologies) at a number of outlets online. Journalism by press release is usually just fine in that genre, but when you enter into politics or editorial, you’d best do some research first. Woodyard, I think, was in over his head on this one.

[source USA Today]

Tags: bias, driving, USA Today