We’re making progress on our quest to be data literacy superheroes...or just, you know,
competent humans.
But actually — and maybe this is breaking news — some of our best data literacy heroes
and heroines already out there are journalists.
Think about it.
Journalists have to constantly check out sources to make sure they’re credible and know what
they’re talking about.
It’s a big deal if they report Hank Green lost a toe in a freak TikTok-related accident
when he’s really alive and well
and still enthusiastic about TikTok.
And journalists treat data sources with the same level of care.
They want to be both accurate and easily understood, so part of their training is finding and interpreting
numbers to add context or fill in gaps.
Investigative journalists in particular are used to piecing together the facts for a hard-hitting story.
So why not learn from the experts?
Today we’ll investigate how data makes its way into the news.
I’m Jessica Pucci and welcome to Study Hall: Data Literacy presented by Arizona State University
and Crash Course.
No matter what they’re reporting on, journalists are under great pressure to get the facts right.
But the stakes are especially high when dealing with a whistleblower, or a person who reveals
secret information to the public to expose illegal or unethical activities.
Many countries have tried to promote transparency by adopting laws to protect whistleblowers.
But it’s still super risky and controversial.
The whistleblower and anyone helping them still risk losing their jobs, going to jail,
or other legal charges.
So if an employee of a car manufacturing company comes forward claiming they have evidence
that waste is being illegally dumped in the local pond,
a journalist needs to tread carefully and verify the data.
The whistleblower is providing access to private records, or information that’s not required
to be turned over to the government or shared outside the company.
But, that’s not the only data our journalist will need.
Sometimes companies publish information themselves, like through press releases.
Press releases put out by research universities and organizations can cover scientific findings
like a new life-saving drug or a never-before-seen species of frog only found in that local pond.
Journalists can use press releases as starting points before contacting the researchers directly.
Our journalist will need to read up on the health effects of exposure to wastewater,
sift through related data from past studies if it’s available, and even conduct interviews
with experts.
Even the most dedicated journalist can’t be an expert on every topic they cover, but
they do need to gather enough background data
to feel comfortable trusting whistleblowers or researchers.
And to keep digging, if they need to.
Interviews will get the journalist qualitative data, including insight into the research
process, and more context than can be stuck in a quick press release.
They want to provide enough detail to help the average reader care that the pond is being polluted.
It’s hard to care about lots of statistics.
Adorable frogs, now people are invested.
But that’s just the tip of the possibly polluted iceberg.
It may not be literal rocket science, but governing large populations also requires
a ton of data at all levels, from local to national.
We average citizens don’t have the time to keep tabs on the alphabet soup of agencies
that produce data and make decisions.
We want to be data literate, but wading through government data in search of trends, irregularities,
and misdeeds is a full time job.
Luckily, journalists often take on the role of keeping government officials accountable
and their audience up to date on important issues like employment, crime, and environmental concerns.
With everything from tomes of regulatory documents the company has to fill out for the state,
to water quality measurements taken by the local university partnering with an environmental agency,
there’s a plethora of places for the journalist to start digging into the government data.
They might like to know what the actual regulations on waste dumping are and who is tasked with
enforcing them.
If they suspect politics are somehow involved, it’s a good idea to follow the money.
Local, state and federal entities all have budgets, and public corporations create long
financial reports.
Not to mention the sometimes shadowy lists of campaign donors behind elected officials.
In the US, some of this data is publicly available on government websites.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics keeps track of employment and wage statistics and produces
monthly reports.
The American Community Survey and the Census provide information about population demographics.
In the money department, resources like OpenSecrets.org track federal campaign finances and lobbying.
In many countries, data that’s not as easy to find can often be pulled from public records,
which are loosely defined as any documents created during government operations.
Since they run on public money (our tax dollars at work), the public has a right to this information.
In the United States, the Freedom of Information Act of 1967 lets the public request records
from any federal agency.
Like say our journalist suspected some kind of quid pro quo was going on and someone was
looking the other way about waste dumping.
They might visit the Securities and Exchange Commission, a US federal agency that regulates
things like stocks and finances and collects reports from public companies
on their finances and management.
Our journalist could request records on who’s nominated to the car company’s board of
directors or for the salaries and benefits of the current board.
This process has become key gov-speak.
Want some government information?
FOIA it!
Let’s leave the journalist to their sleuthing for a bit and do our own FOIA-ing in the Data Point.
Lately you’ve noticed more fireworks going off in your neighborhood.
You ask around, and your friends around the city are dodging more firecrackers and bottle
rockets too.
It’s also been really hot and dry lately, which makes you worried about the potential
fire hazard.
Before you start hosing down anyone with a sparkler, you better see what the data on
fires and illegal fireworks has to say.
A pro tip for delving into the world of public record requests is to first “FOIA the FOIA”
— ask an organization to tell you what data everyone else has requested.
It helps you decide what’s interesting.
Plus, if you can use the same info as someone else, the office should be able to get you
that data quickly.
Within the US, each state has its own public records laws for state-level info.
Many are modelled on FOIA, but what you can access varies.
In some states police records are also considered public records, so you FOIA the FOIA from
your local police department.
When you get the records back, you see that someone has requested 911 calls, and that
gives you an idea.
You file another request for any records on people using illegal fireworks and fires in
your city for this month and the same time last year.
You also ask for any 911 calls connected to fireworks or fire cases for the same months.
When you finally get your data — in an email if you’re lucky, by snail mail if you aren’t
— you count up all the fires and firework incidents. Both have increased this year!
But wait, you are too data literate to confuse correlation and causation.
After all, there might be a confounder in the data.
Hot, dry weather leads to more fires and can encourage people to enjoy the cool night air.
Your records requests found an interesting correlation and perhaps a cautionary tale.
Others might be interested in a similar story and since journalists are working for the
public good, let’s share the wealth of data we uncovered.
Organizations like the non-profit MuckRock help journalists share public record information
and submit public records requests and provide tools to streamline the process.
Around the world there are similar principles for getting info on the inner workings of
the government.
Over 100 countries have FOIA-like laws.
Like EU citizens can request documents from the European Parliament, the Council of the
EU, and the European Commission.
But everyone has different levels of accessibility and enforcement.
Not everything is up for grabs though.
There are some things you can’t ask for.
Like classified documents — which are vaguely anything a government entity deems “sensitive”
or capable of threatening national security
— private data on individual people, material that would interfere with law enforcement investigations,
and internal memos that government agencies circulate internally to discuss what policies
to implement.
And most places don’t make it easy.
It can take a long time to get records back after an initial request.
Agencies are supposed to respond within 20 days, but this can be extended under unusual
circumstances including requests that involve voluminous amounts of records.
And the backlog doesn’t help.
Speaking of which, our journalist should have gotten their FOIA documents by now.
There seems to be some missing health and quality control inspections right around the
time a new public official took office,
sometimes the lack of data is the story.
Public records requests can also cost money.
Some states charge whatever it costs to copy the records or find them and redact sensitive information.
Some estimates have even been over $100,000!
For those of us who aren’t made of money, there are often fee waivers to get around
the cost, especially for journalists acting for the public.
Like ours!
And finally, even if we get the data, we’re not home free.
Formatting can be a huge obstacle.
There are no guarantees that when our records arrive, they’re in a nice format that makes
analyzing the data easy.
Take our journalist for instance.
The independent water quality measurements done by the local university near the pond
weren’t gathered together yet.
They were still living in the scientists’ field notebooks.
Manually entering the numbers into a spreadsheet paid off though.
It looks like the water quality took a turn for the worse right around the time that new
public official took office too.
We always want a spreadsheet but in reality we often get a box full of paper copies.
Sometimes we pay with our own time.
But whether we’re sifting through pages of documents manually or running them through
computer programs, our goal is to find patterns, trends, correlations, and outliers.
Which means journalists don’t just do the heavy lifting in the FOIA department.
They also often make their cleaned up data and code public for others to use.
Sharing data saves others time and money, and makes it easier for others to find additional
stories in the data.
Often a topic can have multiple angles at the local, state, or federal level.
If one national story shows the water usage of companies owned by a particular public
figure, that data could be repurposed at the local journalism level
for areas where the companies are actually located.
The more stories, the merrier!
So how did our journalist ultimately fare?
Things have looked suspicious so far.
As they followed the money they realized that the chairman of the company board just so
happened to donate a lot of money to this public offical’s campaign.
Hmm... it seems like the whistleblower had a point.
All that digging strengthened the whistleblowers claim.
It’ll make a great front page story!
Our journalist took us on quite the adventure today.
And really, journalists are the ultimate data decoders.
We’ll take them as a data literate collaborators any day.
Today we learned that journalists decide if data sources and scientific findings are reliable
(or telling the whole story) by interrogating the people and systems behind them.
And despite differing privacy and information laws, journalists around the globe go after
data, exercising what freedoms they have to get information from the government.
By wrangling a variety of public and private records, journalists track the money, influence,
business dealings, crimes, and environmental impact of people and institutions in power.
Through their efforts, along with their ability to explain resulting patterns and trends in
an accessible way, they keep the powers-that-be accountable to their constituents, we the readers.
For that, we are grateful!
Next time we’ll talk about all the ways data is used on and off the field in, you
guessed it, sports.
Thanks for watching Study Hall: Data Literacy, which is produced by Arizona State University
and the Crash Course team at Complexly.
If you liked this video and want to keep learning with us here in Study Hall, be sure to subscribe.
You can learn more about ASU and the videos produced by Crash Course in the links in the description.
See you next time!