- Number blindness - 26th November 2025
- Biased Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) again - 25th November 2025
- The joke’s on you! - 24th November 2025
After 23 years with the BBC, and in a 42 year journalistic career (when he was trained to use clear and simple language, avoiding jargon), for our Editor, Welshman Phil Parry number crunching is often essential – but he worries about how figures are being massaged by Governments now, or even given out falsely, to present a rosy picture of what is happening, and more of this appears to be happening today.
Numbers (unlike certain official agencies) don’t lie.
They are, however, often given out incorrectly, so the hapless journalist such as me (and I’m not very good with numbers anyway!) has a huge job trying to interpret them in the right way.
Several examples of this have happened recently, so let’s look at them.
Ivory Coast’s President Alassane Ouattara ‘won’ a fourth term at the age of 83, on 89.77 percent of votes.
Yet this was in an election where his two greatest rivals were barred from running, and one in which the electoral commission has major concerns about the way it was conducted, so these ridiculous statistics are exactly what they imply – false.
Entrepreneur Jean-Louis Billon came second but he only got 3.09 per cent.
Ahoua Don Mello and the centrist Henriette Lagou did even worse supposedly, with respectively 1.97 per cent and 1.15 per cent of the votes.
In Tanzania, if anything, the situation is even WORSE!
Samia Suluhu Hassan ‘won’ the presidency on October 29 with an incredible 98 per cent of the vote!
However it appears that even this massive ‘victory’ didn’t satisfy her, and she has seemed unconfident, with her governing party Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) rattled by the biggest protests Tanzania has EVER seen.
Her inauguration was brought forward and moved from a stadium in the largest city, Dar es Salaam, to a military parade ground in Dodoma, the sleepy capital.
The CCM has proscribed opposition parties, jailed their leaders and seemingly fiddled the results, hence the protests, yet rather than make concessions, the CCM has unleashed terror on an unprecedented scale.
Estimates vary, but some critics believe THOUSANDS may have died…
Hundreds of miles away in Mexico the Government is trumpeting a huge success in confronting murderous crimes, and the numbers show they are decreasing.
This is to be applauded, and the figures are nothing like as absurd as in those two elections, but even so how great a triumph is this?
The President Claudia Sheinbaum says the murder rate has come down by 32 per cent in the year since she took office.
Analysis confirms that the rate has fallen, though by a significantly smaller margin, 14 per cent.
Counting homicides alone misses an important part of the picture, namely the thousands of people who disappear in Mexico every year, many of whom are killed and buried in unmarked graves.
A broader view of deadly crime that includes manslaughter, femicide and two-thirds of disappearances (the data for which are shaky), shows a more modest decline of six per cent.
Mexico is on track for about 24,300 murders this year – this is still horribly high, although well below the recent annual average of slightly over 30,000.
So figures (sad to say) MATTER.
Pity politicians play fast and loose with them, because it’s hard enough for journalists like me who might be all right with words, but are completely foxed by numbers!
Details of Phil’s, astonishing decades-long journalistic career (when analysing correct statistics would often play a major part), as he was gripped by the rare neurological condition Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia (HSP), have been released in an important book ‘A GOOD STORY’. Order it now..
Tomorrow – how during that career for Phil, the diversity of media outlets (both left and right wing), has always been a key issue, but now this plurality could be further undermined by disturbing news that the Daily Telegraph could be taken over by the Daily Mail (where he has worked).
