Refinery 29, Yahoo!, MSN Fail To Fix False Data on Country Women
On April 27, the progressive news and commentary site Refinery 29 published an article summarizing the findings from a recent study about the amount of women being played on country radio, accidentally misplacing a decimal point in one of the key findings from the study, and mischaracertizing the ratio of men being played to women as 44 to 1 instead of 4.4 to 1 as the study had found.
In an article titled “Want To Hear A Woman On Country Radio? You’ll Have To Sit Through 44 Songs By Men First,” Refinery 29 not only falsely represented the study’s findings, this incorrect title and information was then rebroadcast through both the Yahoo! and MSN news networks, along being tweeted and retweeted out by numerous outlets and individuals.
Below find screenshots of the original articles and titles from Refinery 29, Yahoo!, and MSN.
As well as the false titles of these articles, the body of the article also reinforced the false information about the ratio of men to women being 44 to 1 on country radio.
Shortly after the article was posted on April 27th, Refinery 29‘s own readers picked up on the error, and alerted the publication through the site’s comments section.
On Monday, April 29th while Saving Country Music was doing research on reactions to the study, it discovered the false information and published an article correcting the errors published by Refinery 29. However despite being notified by numerous individuals—including their own readers—the false headline and story remained on Refinery 29 until Wednesday, May 1st—four days after it was first published—when the publication finally changed the title of the article to, “Want To Hear A Woman on Country Radio? You’ll Have To Sit Though A Lot Of Songs By Men First.” However Refinery 29 still did not change the false information contained in the article itself, which still incorrectly claims the ratio of men to women on country radio is 44 to 1.
Refinery 29 also did not explain why the title was changed or offer a public correction, they simply put at the bottom of the article, “This headline has been updated for clarity.” Refinery 29 has also not notified their partners at Yahoo! or MSN of the title correction, both outlets still have the original title live on the article, along with all three articles still serving clearly false information in the body of the article.
By changing the title of the article on Refinery 29, the outlet acknowledged they are aware of the false reporting present in the story. Perhaps at the beginning, it was simple human error that had led to the mistake. But now they know better, yet are making no effort to correct the false information beyond making the original title more ambiguous.
The next question is, why is Refinery 29 and its partners at Yahoo! and MSN continuing to willfully serve false information to the public about this important study on the representation of women on country radio?
Keaton
May 7, 2019 @ 8:15 am
Progressives are the worst
Trigger
May 7, 2019 @ 8:44 am
Conservatives lie too, and part of the problem is both sides feel they can justify their lies to keep the other side in check. That said, in my nearly 20 years of working as a professional writer, I have never seen such an egregious case of false reporting, and then a willful effort to refuse to correct it, especially in outlets that are so large and serve content to millions of people. This is an embarrassment of journalism, and should immediately be corrected.
TheKillerRocksOn
May 7, 2019 @ 10:20 am
Outlets such as Yahoo! , Refinery29, MSN., etc are agenda driven. There is very little, to no, news reported. They are opinion pieces to create clicks,., the truth and facts are irrelevant. You have to hope no one is going to an obvious one sided source for any valid information., and that goes for either side your on.
wayne
May 7, 2019 @ 10:30 am
Progressive liberals are still the worst.
Cole
May 23, 2019 @ 7:22 am
(It telling me that I’ve allready posted this, I haven’t been able to do that get so this is to try to bypass the confused detector, actual response below)
No, dishonest extremists are the worst. As a progressive liberal I can tell you that thease types of articles are hated by actual liberals. The extremists that wrote them refuse to correct mistakes so it appeals more to other extremists and unskeptical people who are more likely to click on a more shocking article.
This also isn’t a liberal problem either. The conservative talking heads and reporters lie just as much as liberal talking heads and reporters. Many right wing reporters will talk about libreals wanting a universal ban on guns when that is a fairly uncommon opinion on the left. I truely hate that neither sides in the mainstream media seem to be able to argue honestly and only pander to extremists and the unskeptical.
Trigger
May 23, 2019 @ 7:49 am
It’s posted now Cole. Went to moderation for some reason.
Tex Hex
May 7, 2019 @ 10:57 am
“Never let facts get in the way of a good story, especially if it’s a social justice story” = unapologetic credo of most mainstream media today.
Black Boots
May 8, 2019 @ 4:09 am
44 sounded like way too much, obviously, but 4.4 also sounds like way too little…
Trigger
May 8, 2019 @ 9:08 am
4.4 is that actual number taken from the study when considering the overall representation of women on country radio from 2000. Today it’s more like 7.3 to 1, which is still much closer to 4.4 than 44. There is absolutely no intuitive way 44 to 1 would even make sense.
Dr. Donut
May 8, 2019 @ 6:11 am
Liberals love a victim – the last thing they care about is the truth! They want you to believe that women are the victims of an industry dominated by white men.
Lefty Throckmorton
May 9, 2019 @ 4:58 pm
I’m a (pragmatic) progressive, and I find your comment about the emoprogressives (these people are not true liberals, but left wing extremists) that run these media outlets to be true. As CeeCeeBee said here, such sloppy reporting does nothing more than give a free pass for some to scream “fake news by the liberal media”. This story is as bad as the one about Lil Nas X that Rolling Stone published without any fact-checking whatsoever weeks after it had been forgotten.
CeeCeeBee
May 8, 2019 @ 9:04 am
It is unfortunate that they have refused to correct this story. They are doing way more harm to their cause than good. As I commented when SCM first reported this error, such sloppy reporting does nothing more than give a free pass for some to scream “fake news by the liberal media” and completely deny that there is a REAL problem with the under-representation of women artists on main stream country radio.
Yes, there will always be more men than women on the radio. As others have pointed out, there are more men making country music than women. However, to pretend women have the same opportunities in country radio as their male counterparts is absurd.
Remember a few years ago when Chris Stapleton had a “moment” at a country music awards show? His music blew up on radio immediately. This year, Ashley McBryde had her own “moment.” She is not getting radio play. George Straight’s new song got plenty of spins. Reba’s? Not so much. Kacey Musgraves had the most acclaimed music of the year. Radio ignored it. The Pistol Annie’s landed on several “best music of the year” lists. They never landed on country radio. Even Miranda Lambert and Carrie Underwood have lost support from country radio.
It’s fine to point out that women consumers are part of what is driving this male-dominated environment. It’s fair to consider if the women artists themselves share blame for their marketing strategies. It’s accurate to point out country radio is driven by profits and women acts don’t bring in the cash like the male artists. But it’s ludicrous to deny there is a problem and it’s sad that “journalists” are making the issue easily dismissed with their exaggerations.
Trigger
May 8, 2019 @ 9:30 am
People exploiting this bad reporting by Refinery 29 to undercut the cause of women in country is not a hypothetical. If you go to the comments section of the article, Keith Hill has posted a link to his rebuttal of the study.
There is no doubt that radio gives less opportunities to women, but with all the artists you named off, their labels are also not putting the promotional muscle behind them. That’s partly because they see it as spending good money for nothing, but labels have a role in this issue too, and also need to have their feet held to the fire, not just radio.
One good thing is that after losing its bullet, Ashley McBryde’s “Girl Goin’ Nowhere” regained it last week, and cracked the Top 40. Unfortunately it slid a bit this week, but still has its bullet, so I’m hoping it still has some life in it.
C
May 8, 2019 @ 5:33 pm
Well put. I totally agree with all your points. These articles are not helping the cause when they report false information or don’t do the proper research. The numbers are bad enough. They don’t need to be inflated or exaggerated. I just wonder when things will get better.
Saving Bro Country Music
May 9, 2019 @ 10:49 am
Just to be clear – Chris Stapleton’s music didn’t blow up at radio immediately. It was long after the CMAs that he got his first radio #1 … and it required one of those long “pushes” to get there.
On top of that, the comparisons aren’t really equitable. While Ashley McBryde may have delivered an excellent performance, it wasn’t a pop culture moment by any stretch of the imagination. Her song wasn’t even close to the highest-charting of the night on that show (it only went to about #28 on iTunes, which isn’t great for a country awards show). When Stapleton performed, “Tennessee Whiskey” became the best-selling song in all of music, and his album started selling like hotcakes.
The best-selling songs after this year’s ACMs were almost all by male artists, with the exception of Little Big Town’s “Daughters.”
Musgraves is a better example in that she won the AOTY Grammy – and received a ton of post-Grammys interest in “Rainbow.” But, to be fair, radio did provide some immediate support. The song later stalled, but for as much as that bothers me, it had an even worse run at hot adult contemporary radio (which doesn’t have the same issue with playing women, and is probably a more natural fit for the song). So – one could easily say programmers just decided it wasn’t radio friendly enough.
Joe
May 10, 2019 @ 8:41 pm
I saw this article at some point a few days ago, although I can’t remember on which site. Even as a data analyst, I was struggling to understand the conclusions and math used and this correction would certainly help clear things up. However, I recall there being several questionable charts/facts/etc.