Number crunching is central to covering coronavirus. How are journalists making stories from statistics? asks Neil Merrick


Dazed by the data


S


tatistics are playing a key part in reporting the coronavirus pandemic. Covid-19 death numbers were published daily from late March, while data showing how we eat, work and travel in lockdown appears on a regular


basis. In April, with most shops closed, the Home Office even boasted that shoplifting was down. What have journalists learnt during in months about the


validity of statistics and their importance to major stories? Ed Conway, Sky’s economics editor, says it can be


overwhelming if not surreal to be faced with so much data. Along with other journalists who were not used to focusing on health, he initially found it unpleasant to report deaths. “None of us wanted to do death numbers,” he says. “I was a bit hesitant going on TV. I didn’t want people to think I was an epidemiologist.” Yet, along with other journalists, Conway sought to get beneath headline stats. Presenting charts and other graphics on Sky News, there


was a tendency to ‘bounce around’ and engage the audience. “But the numbers behind what I was saying were so awful,” he says.


There is also the question of which data is most valid. From


April, the Office for National Statistics began producing alternative figures to those at daily press briefings, which come from NHS England and devolved governments. ONS figures are published weekly and count deaths where


Figures into words


THE PANDEMIC is not always doom and gloom. With flights grounded and fewer people commuting to work, air pollution fell significantly at the start of lockdown compared with Spring last year. “Air pollution plummets,”


announced Radio Exeter, while Leeds Live hailed the


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“staggering impact” on air quality. Birmingham Live identified the drop in air pollution as one of eight positives – along with home workouts and TV box sets. The air pollution story


originated from the BBC shared data unit, a team of four journalists based in Birmingham, who analyse


government and other data and send stories to local media. Pete Sherlock, assistant


editor at the unit, says its reporters try to highlight more unusual data-based stories that are not always picked up by nationals. “We look at how


coronavirus and lockdown is affecting local communities,” he says. Papers and broadcasters


the death certificate mentions Covid-19, even if it was not the main cause. Government figures, meanwhile, were belatedly updated to include care homes. International comparisons are available from a range of sources but can be fraught with controversy as not all countries count deaths in the same way. At first, the government provided handy graphs showing the UK’s total was lower than elsewhere. But these graphs were dropped after UK figures rose and became among the highest. Caelainn Barr, data projects editor at the Guardian, says the


challenge has been making sense of stats and flagging up when they fail to present a true picture. This means trawling through data from a range of agencies that may appear days apart. “It’s a mess and it’s frustrating,” she says. In June, a Guardian analysis pulled together stats from seven sources to show that deaths in the UK had exceeded


are sent not only a story but a full ‘toolkit’, with quotes and source material such as graphs and charts. For the air pollution story,


the unit analysed raw data from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs as no statistical bulletin was available. The unit is part of the BBC’s


local news partnerships scheme set up with regional publishers, which includes


local democracy reporters. During the pandemic, the


unit has reported on visits to GPs, live music and online gambling. The gambling story


stemmed from Google figures showing people’s leisure habits during lockdown. “We have to be clear about


our data sources,” says Sherlock. “Journalism is only as good as the sources it reports on.”


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