ABSTRACT
Written by the Athens-based bureau chief and Berlin-based chief correspondent for The Associated Press – the news agencies with a daily audience reach of more than half the world's population – this chapter analyzes the most fundamental journalistic practice to be threatened amid polarized politics and dubious information: accurate fact-checking. Numbers were critical to any story about Europe's refugee crisis – the record number of arriving (and dying) migrants was the primary reason it captured the world's attention. But the multitude of numbers officials presented during the crisis were flaky beyond belief – distorted to serve various goals, indicative of systems not set up to deal with such a crisis, or somewhere in between. In Germany, the country that took in the most migrants in 2015, no reliable answer could be found to the driving question: “How many are there?” And numbers were not the only challenge in keeping the facts straight: Personal stories are needed to put faces to the figures, but those stories can be hard to verify, too. Picking out the truth from a fog of obfuscation is as crucial as picking out the right numbers – and so is avoiding dichotomous stereotypes of refugees as persecuted saints or imminent threats.
