Citizen Journalism and the Numbers Game
Image courtesy Hill Post
Padraig Colman-15 Jul, 2013
Kath Noble recently published two articles in The Island, which were reproduced on Colombo Telegraph. [i]
Bring on the Usual Suspects
Some of the reactions to what Ms Noble wrote were depressing but, sadly, not surprising. The usual suspects came up with the usual polemic. Says Dev: “This is absolute rubbish – mere speculations and prejudices! This is a shame on journalism sans facts.”
Many comments on such threads display a similar cognitive dissonance. Commenters seem unable to distinguish between reporting and advocacy, between explanation and justification. Some assume that a view quoted by the writer is the view held by the writer.
Dev calls for facts. It depends what you mean by facts. Colombo Telegraph’s motto is “In Journalism truth is a process”. Dev seems only interested in facts that fit his predisposition but accuses Ms Noble herself of “mere speculations and prejudices”.
He does not seem to have grasped that Ms Noble is reviewing a publication[ii] written by someone else. That publication itself surveys various “facts” put forward about the numbers of civilians killed in the final months of Eelam War IV.
When I wrote about the Marga Institute seminar on The Numbers Game, another commenter displayed an ambivalent attitude to facts: “Numbers don’t matter, it is the truth that matters”.
