Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Journalists, Numeracy And Cultural Capital, Steven Harrison

Numeracy

Journalists are tasked with holding power to account; often, that means evaluating and interpreting numbers. But anecdotally, journalists are ill at ease with figures. This shortcoming is worrying both in terms of the quality of news provided to the public, and the implications for informed democratic debate. This paper tests the assertion that journalism as a profession is numeracy-challenged through a small-scale study of the numeracy capabilities of journalism students. Some oft-cited reasons for these shortcomings are discussed, including the pressures of deadlines and the tyranny of the 24-hour news cycle, where the mantra of “never wrong for long” appears …