The numbers game: A case study of mathematical literacy at a South African newspaper1

Abstract

This paper draws on a mathematics audit of a South African newspaper to make a quantitative assessment reports in a daily newspaper include a quantitative element? How often do mathematical errors occur in those reports? What types of mathematical errors occur in those reports? Twelve consecutive weekday editions of the Cape Times, a daily newspaper based in Cape Town, South Africa, were examined to measure the frequency of quantitative elements in news reports, the frequency of mathematical errors in those reports containing quantitative elements, and the types of errors that occur. The data revealed that a large proportion of news reports include a quantitative element, supporting the hypothesis that journalists need to be mathematically literate. News reports with a quantitative element had a high rate of numerical errors, mostly due to a lack South African journalists and concerns about the ability of the South African media to perform their normative role within a developing democracy.

Science and the media in South Africa: Reflecting a ‘dirty mirror’

“…Less than Downloaded by [University of Glasgow] at 09:03 22 December 2014 ten per cent of journalists with a degree had majored in science. This correlates with other studies in South Africa which show a dearth of scientifically trained and numeracy-literate journalists in newsrooms (Brand 2008;De Beer & Steyn 2002;Prinsloo 2006).…”

Hiding Behind Databases, Institutions and Actors: How Journalists Use Statistics in Reporting Humanitarian Crises

“…It is for this reason, among many others, that mathematic information is considered constitutive of Western journalism itself (Curtin and Maier 2001;Van Witsen 2018;Harrison 2016). Certainly, this is reflected in research that documents the high prevalence of numbers in news media content (Zillman and Brosius 2000, 25;Maier 2002, 511;Brand 2008). Problematically, however, literature also highlights how journalists rarely challenge the numbers they receive and, in doing so, they often reproduce quantitative discourses provided by their sources (Lugo-Ocando and Nguyen 2017b).…”

How Journalists Establish Trust In Numbers And Statistics: Results From An Exploratory Study

“…In this sense, statistics may not be "basically" a form of math at all. In parallel with this research, other investigators (Ahmad, 2016;Brand, 2008;Maier, 2002;McConnell, 2014;Moynihan, et al, 2000) have documented specific examples of mishandling of statistics in journalism. Some continue to blame this on lack of math skills (cite?).…”

“…Journalists less socialized into professional norms might have had different attitudes toward the transparency of numbers generally. This is important because of the repeated findings that journalists' performance with numbers could use improvement, both in their thinking and their finished stories (Ahmad, 2016;Brand 2008;Maier 2002;McConnell, 2014;Moynihan et al, 2000). These problems are troublesome because they persist no matter how nuanced the attitudes of individual journalists that emerge in interviews.…”