Jairo Lugo-Ocando

The state of data and statistics in journalism and journalism education: Issues and debates:

This paper discusses journalists’ vast misunderstanding, underestimation and ignorance of the nature of statistics and their role in shaping the public’s daily work and life. In countering what the authors see as the most common myths about numbers and the news, it aims to set the scene for the key issues and debates that this special issue covers. At the centre of this discussion are three key points: (a) statistics are not distant from the news: they are at the heart of journalism; (b) statistics are not mathematics: they are about the application of the same kind of logical and valid reasoning needed for other types of news material; and (c) statistics are neither cold nor boring: they are an endless source of inspiration for much excellent journalism in the past, present and, undoubtedly, future.

Blaming the Victim: How Global Journalism Fails Those in Poverty

Poverty, it seems, is a constant in todays news, usually the result of famine, exclusion or conflict. In Blaming the Victim, Jairo Lugo-Ocando sets out to de-construct and reconsider the variety of ways in which the global news media misrepresent and de-contextualise the causes and consequences of poverty worldwide. The result is that the fundamental determinant of poverty - inequality - is removed from their accounts.

Stabbing News: Articulating crime statistics in the newsroom

There is a comprehensive body of scholarly work regarding the way media represent crime and how it is constructed in the media narrative as a news item. These works have often suggested that in many cases public anxieties in relation to crime levels are not justified by actual data. However, few works have examined the gathering and dissemination of crime statistics by non-specialist journalists and the way crime statistics are gathered and used in the newsroom. This article seeks to explore in a comparative manner how journalists in newsrooms access and interpret quantitative data when producing stories related to crime. In so doing, the article highlights the problems and limitations of journalists in dealing with crime statistics as a news source, while assessing statistics-related methodologies and skills used in the newsrooms across the United Kingdom when producing stories related to urban crime.

How Malthusian ideology crept into the newsroom: British tabloids and the coverage of the ‘underclass’

ABSTRACT This article argues that Malthusianism as a series of discursive regimes, developed in the Victorian-era, serves in times of austerity to reproduce an elite understanding of social exclusion in which those in a state of poverty are to blame for their own situation. It highlights that Malthusianism is present in the public discourse, becoming an underlining feature in news coverage of the so-called ‘underclass’. Our findings broadly contradict the normative claim that journalism ‘speaks truth to power’, and suggest instead that overall as a political practice, journalism tends to reproduce and reinforce hegemonic discourses of power. The piece is based on critical discourse analysis, which has been applied to a significant sample of news articles published by tabloid newspapers in Britain which focussed on the concept of the ‘underclass’. By looking at the evidence, the authors argue that the ‘underclass’ is a concept used by some journalists to cast people living in poverty as ‘undeserving’ of public and state support. In so doing, these journalists help create a narrative which supports cuts in welfare provisions and additional punitive measures against some of the most vulnerable members of society.

Assessing the Sustainability of Latin American Investigative Non-profit Journalism

This article examines the emergence of Latin American investigative non-profit journalism in terms of organisational sustainability and journalistic dynamics. In so doing, it seeks to understand the role of these organisations, which have come to be described as a new type of journalistic practice for gathering, investigation and dissemination of news, which is conducted by non-profit investigative journalism projects set up between 1998 and 2011. These small groups of journalists have come to work together, creating research-based centres for investigative journalism. The essay describes and examines how these centres and their participants work, how they are funded and create a new business model in the context of their journalistic and editorial practices. By analysing the business model of eight major projects identified by the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas and the Nieman Lab at Harvard University, the authors aim to understand their business model from both a historical and present perspectives. In so doing, the authors have applied the CANVAS model of analysis, which identifies four categories for observation and discussion: infrastructure, product offer, relations with customers and financing. We then locate these findings in the context of a wider theoretical discussion that examines sustainability.

FRAMING REVOLUTION AND RE-FRAMING COUNTER-REVOLUTION

The end of the 1990s marked the rise of left-wing governments in Latin America. Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil, Néstor Kirchner in Argentina, Evo Morales in Bolivia, among others, swept into power, in most cases in landslide victories at the polls, only to encounter almost immediately afterwards a forceful opposition from the mainstream and privately owned commercial news media. Evidence of this can be seen in the active role played by these news media outlets in the rapid overthrow of President Hugo Chavez in April 2002 and in the quasi-antagonistic relations between the media and the government in places such as Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil and Nicaragua. We argue that at the centre of this struggle is an appropriation of history by journalists and news editors which serves to contextualise and frame political news stories so as to provide specific meanings to current accounts and narratives. This, we argue, is in itself a crucial aspect of political power relationships during a period when the armed forces and traditional political parties no longer have the leverage they once had. This article assesses the extent to which journalists and news editors have been using history to frame the accounts and narratives in their news stories as a way of providing legitimacy to their political allies while undermining that of their foes. In so doing, it looks at specific cases in the region, while analysing news content during key events in recent years.

Overcoming the objectivity of the senses: Enhancing journalism practice through Eastern philosophies:

This article attempts to broaden the theoretical boundaries of journalism studies by re-examining journalism practices in the context of divisions between Western and Eastern philosophies. It looks at journalistic techniques of truth-seeking with particular emphasis on i) the ability to pick up a ‘scoop’, that is an original story; ii) interviewing as an art of inquiry, and iii) the use of statistics in supporting evidence. By so doing, the authors want not only to problematise the debates between epistemology and ontology within the boundaries of journalism studies, but also see how Eastern philosophies can help to allocate this debate in a more globalised context that can overcome the limitations set by the Enlightenment as a political project.

When Geopolitics becomes Moral Panic: El Mercurio and the use of international news as propaganda against Salvador Allende’s Chile (1970–1973)

This article analyses how geopolitics was used to create moral panic during Salvador Allende’s government in Chile (1970–1973) and examines the type of recursive devices—such as geopolitical strategic narratives—that were employed by El Mercurio to advance specific discourses that intended to undermine the legitimacy of Allende while mobilising the public agenda towards the political right. Our thesis is that this was done by selective and framed use of international news in ways that somehow created moral panics by bringing geopolitics into the realm of the general public. In so doing, El Mercurio invisibilised important elements and effects of US Foreign Policy while highlighting similar elements and effects of the Soviet Foreign Policy. Our thesis is that in doing so, Allende’s government became associated with the ‘Red Scare’ and subsequently associated with the communist threat. This theme, we argue, remains relevant in times in which there continues to be a prevalent strategic narrative of enemies and foes in international news that continues to be used to create fear and mobilise public opinion towards the right of the political spectrum.

Media Representations of Crime Statistics

This chapter examines the way in which crime statistics are presented to the public and articulated in the news. It assesses the use of crime statistics by journalists when they articulate and produce their stories. It also discusses crime statistics as a news source and its use by journalists to produce, contextualise and substantiate their stories. The main question explored in this chapter is: how is statistical data relating to crime managed and used in the newsroom by journalists and news editors to construct stories that relate to crime? Focusing on this question, the chapter offers initial insights into how crime-related statistics are gathered, managed and presented to the public.

Visualising Crime Statistics

This chapter examines the way crime statistics are visually presented in the news media. It starts by looking at the most basic and traditional ways of representing crime statistics graphically, while defining which are the most common and predominant forms of graphic display. It discusses how and why visualisation of statistical data has become such an important feature in the process of communicating statistics to the wider public and how it has affected the way people understand and react to this type of information. In so doing, it also assesses how the rise of data journalism has affected the way crime statistics are presented in graphical terms, while examining the use of key communication elements and resources such as infographs and interactive graphics.