Communicating statistics with the media: David Spiegelhalter

The Write Structure, A thinking Process Studio

Situation: The media being such an established platform portrays new content to the world everyday. Some of the information taking the rounds of the media is misleading and unreliable, but accepted still in the name of ‘scientific discoveries’ making them look seemingly reliable. There is no direct party that can take charge of this.

Complication: Incorrect understanding of the real situation gets circulated within the people. Content gets exaggerated and people believe things wrongfully. Neither the media nor ‘scientists’ for their discoveries are blamed.

Key Question: Can the media be held responsible? Can they take charge of the situation to ensure otherwise?

1. What did you observe about writing structure?       

  • The framing of one idea in different ways opens ways of interpreting the same piece of information differently. This leads to misleading news.

  • The media should be employed carefully when stating ideas.

  • Twisting facts to make them sound interesting causes more harm than good in terms of delivering knowledge to the public. This causes exaggeration of things that may not be so serious.

2. What causes this system design to grow and survive?

  • The idea of delivering the right information to the right place and acknowledging the need to know the truth has been a consistent belief

3. What emotions did you feel?

  • Even though numbers provide a good visual connect for people to accept, information being portrayed really needs to be reliable. The cause should not be compromised in order to make things interesting.

  • In the long run, if people become more and more aware about how information is unreliable when coming from such sources, their commitment to media as a platform would slowly fade away. I don’t think anybody would want that!

4. What personal decisions are influenced or changed for you as an artist or designer?

  • While crafting catchy titles and phrases for grabbing people’s attention, some focus should be laid on considering whether the cause of the problem is still being communicated in its authentic self.

5. What would be an ideal situation here?

  • The views being put forth should be validated, questioned and backed; and not exaggerated.

  • There should be ownership when information is published. Either scientists actually publish their studies or statisticians and journalists craft their stories without deviating from the initial point.

  • Eliminating the cause for confusion and exaggeration would ensure the delivery of the right information to the right people.