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ABSTRACT
Despite repeated investigations showing that routine news coverage involving statistics leaves much to be desired, scholarship has failed to produce an adequate theoretical understanding of how statistics are employed in journalism. Earlier research showed many journalists think anything counted or measured and expressed in numbers represents a form of unarguable truth, which may affect whether they think statistical information should be checked or verified. This study examines the verification process in detail through an item-by-item examination of how a sample of journalists verified each statistic in a sample of stories. Complicating earlier discoveries, it found the subjects did not have a single standard for verification. The complexity and uncertainties of the news production process led them to follow a range of practices from simple reliance on authority to careful examination of the methods behind a quantified fact claim.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).