24/11/2017 Newswatch

This week Samira Ahmed examines how

BBC News deals with data.

Hello and welcome. The budget was a

useful as ever statistics, how does

BBC News try to help us understand

facts and figures to data

journalism? And the Queen and Prince

Philip celebrate their 70th wedding

anniversary making the date of their

marriage, when?

Africa editor Fergal Keane was on

the spot in Zimbabwe for the news at

ten.

It is the night of the free, a

night like no other in their lives.

A great tension has broken. The

Epoque of fear, of desperation, of

Robert Mugabe has ended. How rarely

does politics translate into

something so truly felt?

This is

history in the making. This is

history, you skies!

That was the BBC

reporting the choice reaction of

Zimbabweans or joining in the

celebrations itself? One viewer that

the latter writing...

One consequence of Robert Mugabe

resignation was the Queen became the

worlds oldest living Head of State

and as it happened Her Majesty had

had her own cause for celebration

the previous day common anniversary

which featured prominently on the

news all day. When it came to

Newsnight on BBC Two, Emily Maitlis

signed off with the programmes own

take on the landmark occasion.

Before we go on the 20th of November

1937 and a skies and cheered on by

thousands of well-wishers, Princess

Elizabeth Wright Lieutenant Philip

Mountbatten. 70 years later the

Queen and Prince Philip are

celebrating their platinum wedding

anniversary but the relationship

with Europe was about to change.

Spain was in crisis as warring

factions fought for control. Some

things don't change, including those

grey skies. Here are some pictures

from the 1937 day.

Good night. Apt

parallels between 1937 on the

present day but was the wedding of

the Queen and Prince Philip actually

in 1937 as confidently stated there

twice?

Know, the year was 1947.

Surely it should have been apparent

that the Princess Elizabeth would

not have married at the age of 11.

Few checks facts and surely Emily

Maitlis's common-sense should have

told her none of this could be true.

What next? An article about Prince

Charles visiting the troops on the

Western front?

Thank you to all the

viewers who pointed out Newsnight

mathematical mistake. For which they

have apologised. Last Saturday, the

body of guy Pope was found near her

home in Dorset after extensive

search. Police have described her

death as unexplained and on Monday

released without charge three

members of the whole family who were

arrested on suspicion of murder.

That led Gary to ask,...

Wednesdays news was dominated by the

budget. The bulletin started with a

report from political editor Laura

Kuenssberg.

Almost ready to go, a

big day for Downing Street. His

prescription for months has been

shaky, to say the least. -- whose

grip. The priority for number ten

and 11 those powerful next-door

neighbours was for today's events

not to slip, to keep the budget is

tightly within their grasp. The

Chancellor, the aim to be the steady

National bank manager not terror the

rules altogether. Knowing his own

job as well as the government's

fortunes would be shaped by what she

was about to say.

Much more

followed.

Glenn almost picked up -- also

picked up on the Westminster village

aspects of the coverage.

If ever

there was a prime example of

Westminster media card talent is the

prior reporting the budget. I would

suggest the most important thing for

the people of this country is not

whether the Chancellor keeps his job

all the respect of his Cabinet

colleagues but how the budget will

affect each and every of us. We do

not want an opinion from the

Westminster insiders, wake up and

smell the coffee, political

presenters.

There was plenty of detail around

the Budget coverage, including a

welter of facts figures

and statistics.

To help the audience make sense

of these, BBC News and

especially its web-site provided

a number of graphs and other visual

material, enabling us

all to see the impact of some

of the Chancellor's measures.

And the state of economy.

These are all part of a big area

of growth for BBC news known as data

journalism.

And with me now to tell us

about it is John Walton.

Data journalism is

talked about a lot,

what is it and is it something new.

I think data journalism is no

different from traditional

journalism, except for the raw

materials a data journalist is

using.

So a data journalist is often

starting their story with data or

statistics.

So you might find them rummaging

in a spread sheet, which

is quite different image from that

of the typical kind of roving

reporter.

But I think it has been

with us for a long time.

You could argue that

people like Florence

Nightingale could be a data

journalist, if you look at the kind

of visualisation she did

of the figures around

the Crimean War, so that kind

of thing has been around

for a long time.

There is ever increasing

amounts of data and

it's part of daily life,

so we need to be across that.

A lot of what you do

is personalised.

Can you talk us through

what you did on the Budget?

Yes, so for the Budget we produced,

in collaboration with the business

team and Deloitte, we made a Budget

calculator where people coming to

the web-site could tap in about 10

or so questions, put in their

figures and from that

we would give them

a quick summary of how

the

Budget might have affected them.

So that's getting

people way from just

having to deal with the averages

or the national figures that the

Chancellor might be giving them.

What we are hoping

to do is put somebody

in the story themselves,

so

they can see directly

how this affects them.

How much data are you

dealing with on stories,

perhaps you would look at the house

pricing story you did

recently.

So the house pricing story

is a really good example of that.

We wanted to see how

house prices had

recovered since 2007 and the crash.

And what we did to do

that was we looked at eight

million rows of data -

all the house sales in England and

Wales over that period.

So we could look at how

that had changed across

England and Wales.

And we were able to look

at those figures and

estimate that about 58%

of neighbourhoods had not recovered

once inflation is

taken into account.

So their house prices were actually

lower than when they

started in 2007.

Are you finding new

stories as well through

this?

Yes, so one series of stories

was on the NHS, when we looked at

NHS figures.

We have also done the house price

story that we mentioned.

But we are looking in

all sorts of places.

We did some civil aviation figures.

So there is lot of different data

sources and this is a

growth area for journalists.

There is so much data.

Not everybody has the

skills to interpret it

themselves.

Some people have said

that the personalised

stories that can appear

on the news web-site,

can seem oversimplified.

Do you put in enough data for them

to be really meaningful?

I think we do, I think

that as long as you put

context around the figures,

if you can show how they may have

changed or you can show how they may

compare

to another country,

as long as you're

putting context around

the

figures, I think the audience can

make their own judgments as to how

useful they find them.

We also with more than

half of the audience to

the web-site at least

coming on a mobile phone,

we have a very small canvas to work

with, so people have

to be able to take in

figures that are just

on that small screen

and we

have to work with that.

One complaint we have

had at Newswatch

and it comes up, when they're

watching reports that give a number,

X million pounds extra to NHS,

but not a context tot make

a judgment about them.

That has not been a criticism

of web-site, but sometimes

of news reports.

Why is that happening

and what can you do about

it?

I think it happens simply

because you, if you're covering

something like the budget

it is difficult not to get into the

figures.

But I think there are things you can

do to humanise that.

If you want to help people

understand figures you can bring

them down to a human level

and instead of saying there maybe

one billion pounds spent on such

and

such, you try and work out what that

figure might be per household.

Or per person.

Or if it is education per child.

So you humanise the figures

and make them smaller and

making them more relevant to people.

Before we go, a taste of what

Thursday's afternoon life brought

its viewers in the studio ahead of

this weekend UK beats botching

Championship were Jack Ruppert

demonstrating that at Simon McCoy.

Tara Mulholland posted her reaction

on Twitter.

But after the item was re-shown an

hour later, Richard Mills thought...

Do let us know if you would like to

see more or less beat boxing on BBC

News and if you have any other

opinions on BBC News and current

affairs or would like to appear on

the programmes you can call us...

That is all from us. We're back to

hear your thoughts about BBC News

coverage again next week. Goodbye.