{
  "id": "1998-february-behind-the-ratings",
  "slug": "1998-february-behind-the-ratings",
  "url": "https://dwillis.github.io/uplink/article/1998-february-behind-the-ratings.html",
  "year": 1998,
  "month": "February",
  "monthNum": 2,
  "headline": "Behind the Ratings",
  "kicker": "INSPECTION Du JOUR",
  "author_name": "Stuart Watson",
  "author_title": "",
  "affiliation": "WRAL",
  "summary": "A North Carolina TV station analyzed restaurant health inspection databases and found significant inconsistencies in grading systems, with restaurants receiving 'A' ratings despite serious violations like maggots and raw sewage backups due to flawed point deduction rules.",
  "keywords": [
    "restaurants",
    "inspections",
    "violations"
  ],
  "topics": [
    "Investigative Methods",
    "Data & Databases",
    "Health & Environment"
  ],
  "technologies": [
    "spreadsheet"
  ],
  "full_text": "Most of us eat out hundreds of times a year - sometimes more often than we eat at home. While some CAR veterans look down their noses at reports on restaurant health inspections as elementary or overdone, few topics strike closer to home with the public. Many newspapers have long posted weekly sanitation inspections as part and parcel of the news of record. Now, databases of restaurant inspection reports are ready-made for the Web. They give the public fingertip access to raw information about local eateries.\n\nWRAL's series began when a customer at a McDonald's restaurant in Raleigh, N.C., took a close look at its sanitation inspection report posted on the wall. Surprised, she called us to say that, while the local health department had awarded the McDonald's an \"A\" sanitation grade, the inspector had noted maggots growing in an unused ice cream machine.\n\nMaking the grade\n\nSo what does an \"A\" rating mean, anyway? We filed an Open Records Act request to get our county's database of sanitation inspection reports to find out. Rules, however, vary from state to state. As we say in TV, check your local listings.\n\nNorth Carolina, South Carolina and Nevada are the only states that use A-B-C ratings. Most states still use variations of a 100-point scale. Some are moving toward the Food and Drug Administration's latest \"model\" food inspection rating system, which calls for a satisfactory/unsatisfactory approach that is obviously less conducive to computer-assisted reporting.\n\nNorth Carolina's database (including only one fourth of all counties) includes fields for type of violation, numbers of points deducted from a 100-point scale, final score and - most valuable of all - the inspector's comments. We found restaurants reportedly having maggots, raw sewage backups, and rats breeding in the dumpster that still received \"A\" ratings.\n\nInspectors routinely cited restaurants for less sensational - though more hazardous - violations like food served at improper temperatures and raw meat contaminating cooked food, yet gave them \"A\" ratings as well. The inspectors aren't to blame. The state's 100-point system allows a maximum deduction of only five points for each type of violation - not each individual violation. So a restaurant with a series of relatively innocuous but different violations could score lower than a restaurant with a series of threatening but similar ones. As is the case with almost all computer-assisted reporting, the database was not the final story only the beginning of questions. We adopted the methodology used by Mike Wendland at WDIV-TV in Detroit: culling the lowest and highest scores, then looking at files at the health department to build a much smaller spreadsheet with at least 3 inspections for the group of low-scoring restaurants.\n\nExpecting surprise\n\nThis removed the \"just-had-a-bad-day\" defense and showed restaurants that scored poorly over time.\n\nIt also contained a surprise. Seven of the 10 lowest scoring restaurants posted \"A\" ratings. Because inspectors are required to re-inspect within 15 days, some restaurants would routinely score low on surprise inspections then clean up their act. The lower and arguably more representative grade from the surprise inspection hangs in public view for two weeks tops; the higher grade from the not-so-surprise inspection hangs on the wall for public consumption for months until it's time for another surprise inspection. Our report aired just as the state was debating changing from letter grades to number grades. So we were able to follow the debate with new information and context. Our experience is by no means unique. But in this instance, just because a topic has been covered well in another market does not mean your audience would not benefit from another treatment of it locally - especially if you can augment the on-air story with relevant information online.",
  "provenance": {
    "extracted_by": "anthropic/claude-sonnet-4-6",
    "extracted_at": "2026-07-05",
    "verified": true
  },
  "similar": [
    {
      "slug": "1998-february-dirty-kitchens",
      "score": 0.244
    },
    {
      "slug": "2001-januaryfebruary-restaurant-inspections",
      "score": 0.221
    },
    {
      "slug": "1994-march-dining-on-eatery-data",
      "score": 0.201
    },
    {
      "slug": "1998-february-inspection-du-jour-restaurants-revealed",
      "score": 0.192
    },
    {
      "slug": "1998-february-processor-violations",
      "score": 0.18
    }
  ],
  "html_url": "https://dwillis.github.io/uplink/article/1998-february-behind-the-ratings.html",
  "json_url": "https://dwillis.github.io/uplink/article/1998-february-behind-the-ratings.json"
}