Avoiding the Traps of the Numbers Game and Caricatures
Elena Becatoros, David Rising · 2018
Written by the Athens-based bureau chief and Berlin-based chief correspondent for The Associated Press – the news agencies with a daily audience reach of more than half the world&s;s population – this chapter analyzes the most fundamental journalistic practice to be threatened amid polarized politics and dubious information: accurate fact-checking. Numbers were critical to any story about Europe&s;s refugee crisis – the record number of arriving (and dying) migrants was the primary reason it captured the world&s;s attention. But the multitude of numbers officials presented during the crisis were flaky beyond belief – distorted to serve various goals, indicative of systems not set up to deal with such a crisis, or somewhere in between. In Germany, the country that took in the most migrants in 2015, no reliable answer could be found to the driving question: “How many are there?” And numbers were not the only challenge in keeping the facts straight: Personal stories are needed to put faces to the figures, but those stories can be hard to verify, too. Picking out the truth from a fog of obfuscation is as crucial as picking out the right numbers – and so is avoiding dichotomous stereotypes of refugees as persecuted saints or imminent threats.