Abstract
This book is an excellent entry point into the tangled world of data journalism and the complexities involved with equipping current and future journalists with the skills to practice it. The editor, An Nguyen, and the authors of the 16 chapters use data to back up their plain-speaking arguments and incisive insights into the core difficulties being faced by both the news industry and the academy that serves it.
The authors make the case for the inclusion of more and better data journalism training in tertiary journalism curricula for two reasons. First, they recognize that data is abundantly available and is a viable alternative to government spin as a source of news. Second, they raise concerns about the dangers of data journalism done badly.
Fabienne Crettaz von Roten opens the debate writing about common statistical errors in news and raises the issue of statistical literacy, described as ‘the ability to understand and critically evaluate statistical results that permeate our daily lives’ (2018, p. 20). Citing examples including misplaced decimal points, comparisons of incomparable figures, glossing over error margins and careless use of technical terms (such as significant, random and correlation), Crettaz von Roten argues that journalists who make these kinds of errors fail to fulfil their societal role and break their contract with their readers.
She also claims that one of the key social roles of journalists is education and that, by failing to engage more meaningfully with data, journalists are failing to raise the statistical literacy standards of their readerships. In their chapter, Robert Griffin and Sharon Dunwoody, who have been researching challenges to the introduction of quantitative (statistical) literacy and numeracy into communications faculties since the 1990s, offer a sobering insight into the structural hindrances to changing university curricula and the unfair burden placed on innovative academics. While their research found that faculty ‘chairs’ are keen on the idea of incorporating statistical literacy training, they found that little action had taken place. Their concerns about this centre, as Crettaz von Roten’s do, on the dangers of bad journalism. Calling for training that would help journalists distinguish signal from noise in big datasets and to understand probability better, they wrote: ‘Data can be dangerously misleading if journalists don’t know how to reason with such resources’ (Griffin and Dunwoody, 2018, p. 254).
While the authors document the rising uptake of data journalism in the news media, they also raise concerns about its role in the ‘post truth’ era, and the importance of correct and credible data reporting. There are worrying signs emerging that poor quality data journalism is resulting in statistics losing their authority in public discourse, and being perceived by audiences as untrustworthy, as well as ‘insulting or arrogant’ (Davies, 2017: cited in Nguyen, 2018). Documentation of these trends is important as honoured trust-contracts with readers are seen as a vital part of the re-establishment of journalism in new and sustainable business models.
In addition to providing educators with fresh insights and researchers with springboards for future studies, many of the chapters can be shared with students, to inform their developing practice. These include Yael de Haan et al.’s (2018) investigation, using eye-tracking and surveys, of how people read infographics and what characteristics predict reader appreciation. Another is Kevin McConway’s analysis of the reporting of research into the possible link between mobile phone use and cancer, which shows that studies that reported a link were given extensive coverage while studies showing no link were often ignored. This cuts to the issue of news selection and consideration of how reporting impacts on readers. These issues again relate more to statistical literacy than numeracy and indicate the importance of teaching these critical thinking skills.
Jairo Lugo-Ocando and Brendan Lawson argue that frames of statistical reporting may be to blame for public acceptance of poverty as a natural phenomenon, and apathy about challenging its root causes. They call for greater rigour in journalistic interrogation of the ‘transparency, neutrality and independence’ (p. 73) of statistics, before presenting them as truths. They are not opposed to the use of statistics in news reporting but call for a holistic approach in which human stories are not overlooked in articles about statistics and policy
Idrees Ahmed also weighs in on the grim implications of over-reliance on statistics provided by partial sources in writing about drone warfare in Pakistan. He claims that by accepting official claims about the status of people killed by drones the media ‘lowballed civilian deaths’ (p. 49) and denied the public the opportunity to assess the program’s moral implications.
Read together, this collection of 16 chapters, with Nguyen’s introduction, captures the complex current circumstances in which data journalism is a potential remedy to problems facing journalism as a whole, and also a dangerous weapon in untrained hands. While Griffin and Dunwoody give reasons to be sceptical about how helpful universities might be in providing structural support, the progress evident in other articles give reasons for optimism about the growing body of knowledge about best practice data journalism and how audiences react to it. Overall, the tone is encouraging, with underpinnings of concern about what may happen if data journalism training is neglected, allowing partisan sources to control the message the media is relaying.