Wednesday 10 February 2016

Afraid of Numbers

Reporting of the New Hampshire primary results has been copious but irritatingly  vague. There are comments to the effect that someone did better than someone else and someone else did even worse than yet another person, but there there is no clear statement what happened.

A table giving the votes of each candidate would make all the waffle redundant.

I've often noticed that the media are reluctant to be precise, and suspect that many reporters and editors are afraid of numbers.



1 comment :

Gerard Mason said...

Giving people the actual numbers would (even if only to a very minimal degree in this case) give them the power to think for themselves. That is completely verboten in modern journalism, which is all about spin and the shaping of public opinion. They don't care what the facts are, they only care that they can make you believe certain things about them.