Third International Conference on Communication & Media Studies

Abstract

The use, and misuse, of numbers in the news is an old issue for media scholars. Little has been said, however, on how such quantitative information can enhance the level of quality in the media in general, and in journalism, in particular. Generally speaking, the use of numbers is a powerful tool in making news more objective, authoritative and ultimately more credible. Far from debating here how numbers can be doctored or misleading, this paper instead aims at focussing on the relationship between statistics and the concept of quality within the news media ecosystem by answering: does quality statistics translate automatically into quality news? This would be also an opportunity to reframe the concept of quality journalism through the lesson learned from statisticians, where quality seems to be guaranteed through a “procedural strategy” rather than a “ritualistic strategy”. Would be this change in strategy a new approach to re-assess quality news? Through examples and the data from a fieldwork conducted in the United Kingdom, this paper is an attempt to answer such questions.