ABSTRACT

Despite repeated investigations showing that routine news coverage involving statistics leaves much to be desired, scholarship has failed to produce an adequate theoretical understanding of how statistics are employed in journalism. Earlier research showed many journalists think anything counted or measured and expressed in numbers represents a form of unarguable truth, which may affect whether they think statistical information should be checked or verified. This study examines the verification process in detail through an item-by-item examination of how a sample of journalists verified each statistic in a sample of stories. Complicating earlier discoveries, it found the subjects did not have a single standard for verification. The complexity and uncertainties of the news production process led them to follow a range of practices from simple reliance on authority to careful examination of the methods behind a quantified fact claim.

摘要

尽管反复调查表明涉及统计的常规新闻报道仍有很多不足之处，但学术界未能对统计如何在新闻中使用产生足够的理论理解。早先的研究表明，许多记者认为任何被计算或测量并用数字表示的东西都代表了一种无可争辩的真理，这可能会影响他们是否认为应该检查或核实统计信息。本研究通过逐项检查记者样本如何验证故事样本中的每个统计数据来详细检查验证过程。使早期的发现复杂化，它发现受试者没有单一的验证标准。