ABSTRACT
Data and statistics are a pervasive feature and an integral part of public discourse on development. This chapter examines how journalists deal with development statistics and how this affects what is said about development. It seeks to underline that the inherent power of development data and statistics should not preclude journalists from examining them within the social, political and historical context in which they are located. Statistics are part of the fabric of our increasingly data-driven society and, as such, have long become essential, perhaps as essential as words, in news construction of social reality. Naive empiricism manifests in the articulation of news about development across the world. One of the prominent cases in which numbers are articulated to serve power is that of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which is often used as an indicator of wealth. GDP is undoubtedly the most quoted statistic in news on development.
