News Releases Published on Special Occasions

1
News Releases Published on Special
Occasions

• Ida Repovž GrabnarUNECE Work Session on
  Statistical Dissemination and Communication
  September 2006

2
Statistics is the mirror of society when

• objective, transparent and politically
  independent statistics is applied in the country
• statistics is for whatever reason not objective
  and is biased, but the media play their key role
  by disclosure of intruders in statistical system

3
Role of media in dissemination

• Media as the most effective dissemination channel
  of statistics to ordinary people
• describe facts and figures by transferring them
  from statistical to more understandable language
• simultaneously promote official statistics
• judge the statistical office and its work, in
  view of their integrity, independence,
  transparency of the statistical system

4
Journalists

• Code of Ethics of Slovenian Journalists
• The first principle states
• the public has the right to be informed
• the journalists have the right of to express
  their opinions, which can be implemented by free
  gathering, disseminating and transmitting
  information.

5
Double role of journalists

• censors of the state institutions behavior with
  strong power in creating public opinion
• simple human beings possessing limited
  educational background in statistics, with whom
  special care is required in maintaining
  professional and open relationships

6
The need of journalists for statistics

• in corroborating their assumptions or just to
  illustrate issues in articles
• in informing public about pertinent, up-to-date,
  important or interesting statistics
• in informing of unexpected, shocking news about
  statistical office

7
Statistical literacy among journalists ?

• to read statistics, the following is required
  the ability to understand statistical terminology
  and concepts of methodologies that accompany
  statistical data
• statistical thinking covers understanding of
  statistical data, data-related arguments and all
  kinds of statistical measures for describing the
  relationship between variables
• Can we say that journalists are statistically
  illiterate? Scarcely, reasons for publishing
  press releases are well-known and were documented
  in published manuals years ago.

8
Statisticians

• Statisticians often presume that users of
  statistics, including journalists, have the
  ability to understand statistics and its
  methodological background that accompanies
  statistical data they are adequately
  statistically literate.
• Should we not make the first move in publishing
  comprehensible texts instead of our demand that
  the public and journalists master substantial
  literacy?
• We make it our duty to facilitate users to
  understand statistics and to translate
  professional statistical language into common
  language.

9
Statistics goes hand in hand with journalists

• Slovenian statistical office can anticipate the
  needs of journalists in view of our own
  experiences in the past and publishes news
  releases for special occasions when something in
  the country is taking place at holidays, for
  national or international days which are devoted
  to a specific group of people or some activity,
  phenomena or appearance.
• News releases at special occasions cover more
  fields of statistics, avoiding a purely
  statistical-numerical approach, and provide soft,
  easy to understand, summarized information on the
  selected subject.

10
Statistics goes hand in hand with journalists (2)

• news releases at special occasions in 2006 26
  releases for national and international days like
  Earth Day, World Communication Day,
  Internationally Family Day, National Farm Women
  Day, World Day of Post, World Truism Day,
  National Mountaineering Day, National Day of
  Culture, International Day of Older Persons,
  World Youth Day, etc.

11
Statistics goes hand in hand with journalists (3)

• The structure of special news releases
• title should tell the purpose of the release
• short summary of no more than two sentences
• content in subheadings
• no methodological explanations or notes
• simplified language
• no table
• one graph maximum
• not always bilingual (Slovenian/English)

12
Experiences with the first two occasional news
releases

• A quite lively debate was evoked in the
  statistical office over whether or not the texts
  in press releases were too simplified and if they
  were not professionally statistical enough
• Press-clipping reviews for the first two releases
  in 2005 showed astonishingly good results, which
  urged us to continue launching similar releases
  for the remaining red-letter days and holidays

13
Multi-fold results

• Even though writing news release is not an easy
  task for statisticians, after publishing in the
  media, statisticians are rewarded with
  satisfaction and self-promotion the author is
  often exposed for further explanations or more
  detailed statistics and interviews
• Usefulness of statistics is approved
• Official statistics is promoted
• Statistical office is known as being an
  adequately open institution