Grouping stories by country of origin, we sum the scores of editing
inaccuracies in news about each country, and divide the total by the number
of stories about that country. This yields a measure of editing inaccuracy per
story concerning these countries. Table II presents indexes of editing
inaccuracy for those countries with an adequate number of stories in the
sample. News about Brazil, Ethiopia and Argentina has been exceptionally
badly edited: 2.2-3.7 on the 0-6 point scale, the equivalent of one serious
error per story. Individual stories about these countries score very heavily:
12 for PA's editing of the Brazil floods, 14 Ethiopian revolution (PA), 10
Mrs Peron (XA). These scores represent the equivalent of two or more
extreme inaccuracies per story. The other countries were all Western except
the Soviet Union, and were all passably well edited.