Poor numbers, poor news: the ideology of poverty statistics in the media (original) (raw)

Abstract

The way journalists use statistics when reporting poverty reflects not only common approaches but also ideological choices linked to the wider context of journalism as a social practice. In this chapter, the authors analyse how poverty statistics are used and why they are articulated in the media discourses in the way they are. Looking at the history of these statistics in the news media and the current way they are incorporated in the news, the authors argue that in many cases they obscure rather than enlighten the way the public think about poverty.

Loading...

Loading Preview

Sorry, preview is currently unavailable. You can download the paper by clicking the button above.

References (57)

  1. Alvares , C., & Sachs, W. (1992). The Development Dictionary: A Guide to Knowledge as Power. London: Zed Books.
  2. Berkowitz, D., & TerKeurst, J. V. (1999). Community as interpretive community: rethinking the journalist source relationship. Journal of Communication, 49(3), 125-136.
  3. Brown, J. D., Bybee, C. R., Wearden, S. T., & Straughan, D. M. (1987). Invisible power: Newspaper news sources and the limits of diversity. Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, 64(1), 45.
  4. Cater, D. (1965). The fourth of government. New York: Vintage Books.
  5. Cook, T. (2005). Governing with the news (2nd ed.). London: . Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.
  6. Crozier, M. (2008). Listening, learning, steering: new governance, communication and interactive policy formation. Policy & Politics, 36(1), 3-19.
  7. de Waal, A. (2005). Famine that Kills. New York: Oxford University Press.
  8. Desrosières, A., & Naish, C. (2002). The politics of large numbers: A history of statistical reasoning. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.
  9. Escobar, A. (1995). Encountering development: The making and unmaking of the Third World. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
  10. Esser, F. (2013). Mediatization as a challenge: media logic versus political logic. In H. Kriesi (Ed.), Democracy in the Age of Globalization and Mediatization (pp. 155-176). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
  11. Ferguson, J., & Lohmann, L. (1994). The anti-politics machine:'development'and bureaucratic power in Lesotho. The Ecologist, 24(5).
  12. Fioramonti, L. (2013). Gross domestic problem: The politics behind the world's most powerful number. London: Zed Books.
  13. Fioramonti, L. (2014). How Numbers Rule the World. London: Zed Books.
  14. Gans, H. J. (2014). The American news media in an increasingly unequal society. International Journal of Communication, 8, 12.
  15. Hajer, M. A. (2009). Authoritative governance: Policy making in the age of mediatization: Oxford University Press.
  16. Harkins, S., & Jairo, L.-O. (2016). All People are Equal, but Some People are More Equal than Others: How and Why Inequality Became Invisible in the British press. In J. Servaes & T. Oyedemi (Eds.), The Praxis of Social Inequality in Media: A Global Perspective. Communication, Globalization, and Cultural Identity. London: Rowman & Littlefield.
  17. Iliffe, J. (1987). The African Poor: A History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Institute, C. (2016). Cato's Mission. Retrieved 11/11/2016, 2016, from https://www.cato.org/mission
  18. Ipsen, C. (2003). Under the Stats of Fascism: The Italian Population Projection of 1929-31. In J. Fleischhacker, H. A. Gans & T. K. Burch (Eds.), Populations, Projections, and Politics: Critical and Historical Essays on Early Twentieth Century Population Forecasting (pp. 205-224). West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press.
  19. Jerven, M. (2013). Poor Numbers: How we are misled by African development statistics and what to do about it. New York: Cornell University Press.
  20. Kershaw, I. (1973). The Great Famine and Agrarian Crisis in England, 1315-1322. Past and Present, 59(1), 3-50.
  21. Globalization and the poor, a look at the evidence [Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIldvz0jygE&t=135s
  22. Koch, T. (1990). The news as myth: Fact and context in journalism. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Publishing Group.
  23. Kurunmäki, L., Mennicken, A., & Miller, P. (2016). Quantifying, Economising, and Marketising: Democratising the social sphere? Sociologie du Travail, 58(4), 390-402.
  24. Lewis, J., Williams, A., & Franklin, B. (2008). A compromised fourth estate? UK news journalism, public relations and news sources. Journalism studies, 9(1), 1-20.
  25. Lugo-Ocando, J. (2014). Blaming the victim: How global journalism fails those in poverty. London: Pluto Press.
  26. Lugo-Ocando, J., & Faria Brandão, R. (2015). STABBING NEWS: Articulating crime statistics in the newsroom. Journalism Practice, 10(6), 715-729.
  27. Lugo-Ocando, J., & Nguyen, A. (2017). Developing News: Global Journalism and the Coverage of 'Third World' Development Hardcover. Abingdon, OX: Routledge.
  28. Madra, Y. M., & Adaman, F. (2014). Neoliberal Reason and Its Forms: De Politicisation Through Economisation. Antipode, 46(3), 691-716.
  29. Manning, P. (2001). News and news sources: A critical introduction: Sage.
  30. Maras, S. (2013). Objectivity in journalism. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
  31. Marcinkowski, F., & Steiner, A. (2014). Mediatization and Political Autonomy: A Systems Approach. In H. Kriesi (Ed.), Mediatization of Politics: Understanding the Transformation of Western Democracies (pp. 74-89). Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan.
  32. Masood, E. (2016). The Great Invention: The Story of GDP and the Making and Unmaking of the Modern World. New York: Pegasus Books.
  33. Mollat, M. (1986). The poor in the Middle Ages: an essay in social history. London: Yale University Press.
  34. Olson, J., & Lanjouw, P. (2001). How to compare apples and oranges: Poverty measurement based on different definitions of consumption. Review of Income and Wealth, 47(1), 25-42.
  35. Perrot, J.-C., & Woolf, S. J. (1984). State and statistics in France, 1789-1815. London: Taylor & Francis.
  36. Philipsen, D. (2016). The Little Big Number. How GDP came to rule the world and what we can do about it. Princeton, New Jersey: Princenton University Press.
  37. Prévost, J.-G. (2009). Total Science: Statistics in Liberal and Fascist Italy: McGill-Queen's Press-MQUP.
  38. Rahnema, M. (2001). Poverty. Retrieved 19/11/2016, 2016, from http://www.pudel.uni- bremen.de/pdf/majid2.pdf
  39. Rapley, J. (2004). Development studies and the post-development critique. Progress in Development Studies, 4(4), 350-354.
  40. Ravallion, M. (2003). The debate on globalization, poverty and inequality: why measurement matters. International Affairs, 79(4), 739-753.
  41. Ross, E. (1998). The Malthus Factor. Poverty, Politics and Population in Capitalist Development. London: Zed Books.
  42. Schrott, A. (2009). Dimensions: Catch-all label or technical term. In K. Lundby (Ed.), Mediatization: Concept, Changes, Consequences (pp. 41-61). Bern: Peter Lang Publishing Inc.
  43. Schudson, M., & Anderson, C. (2009). Objectivity, professionalism, and truth seeking in journalism. The handbook of journalism studies, 88-101.
  44. Stiglitz, J., Sen, A., & Fitoussi, J.-P. (2010). Mis-Measuring Our Lives. Why GDP Doesn't Add Up. New York: The New Press.
  45. Temkin Yedwab, B., & Salazar-Elena, R. (2012). México 2010-2011: los últimos años de una gestión cuestionada. Revista de ciencia política (Santiago), 32(1), 193-210.
  46. Thompson, J. B. (1995). The media and modernity: A social theory of the media. Cambridge: Polity Press.
  47. Tuchman, G. (1978). Making News: A Study in the Construction of Reality. New York: Free Press. UN. (2011). When a food security crisis becomes a famine. Retrieved 09/11/2016, 2016, from http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=39113#.WCMDnvmLTIU
  48. Vilchis, R. R. G. (2013). El regreso del dinosaurio: un debate sobre la reciente victoria del PRI en la elección presidencial de 2012. Estudios Políticos, 28, 145-161.
  49. Webster, D. (2002). Unemployment: how official statistics distort analysis and policy, and why. Radical statistics, 79, 96-127.
  50. Weisbrot, M., Sandoval, L., & Rosnick, D. (2006). Índices de pobreza en Venezuela: En búsqueda de las cifras correctas Informe Temático, Washington DC. Washington, DC Center for Economic and Policy Research.
  51. Zelizer, B. (1993). Journalists as interpretive communities. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 10(3), 219-237.
  52. Zuberi, T. (2001). Thicker than blood: How racial statistics lie. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
  53. i David Agren (July 18, 2016). CityMexico cuts poverty at a stroke -by changing the way it measures earnings. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/18/mexico-cuts-poverty-national-statistics- changes-earnings-measurements (accessed on October 20, 2016).
  54. Elliot, L. (2016) 'World Bank renews drive against inequality', The Guardian, 2 October, 2016. iii Hannah, F. (2016) 'Can we solve UK poverty? The UK could solve poverty by 2030, according to one think- tank, but how?' The Independent, 2 November, 2016.
  55. iv Hannah, F. (2016) 'Can we solve UK poverty? The UK could solve poverty by 2030, according to one think- tank, but how?' The Independent, 2 November, 2016.
  56. v Hannah, F. (2016) 'New definitions of poverty are re-defining financial hardship', The Independent, 14 April, 2016. vi Lynn, M. (2016) 'Why the title of 'developing country' no longer exists', The Telegraph, 23 May, 2016.
  57. vii Lynn, M. (2016) 'Why the title of 'developing country' no longer exists', The Telegraph, 23 May, 2016. viii Bennett, G. (2016) 'Increase in Number of Working Households in Poverty', The Times, 29 June, 2016. ix Quinn, T. (2016) 'Ireland Poverty Crisis; 1.3 million struggle without basics', The Daily Mirror, 5 October, 2016.