With the rising misinformation and disinformation on social media and other platforms, a journalist’s guide to reporting numbers is being made available to help media workers in data gathering.

The e-book, “Making it Count: A Journalist’s Guide to Numbers”, was written by experienced journalists to help budding reporters, as well as students, to wrestle facts out and teach them how to correctly report data.

The e-book is also expected to help media people in communicating numbers effectively, especially those who are struggling with innumeracy, which is faced by most journalists.

“With the rise of misinformation in the media, it’s more important than ever to report data correctly. That’s where our guide, along with its useful tools, come in,” said Matt Mucha, CEO of tech company Omni Calculator.

To create the e-book, he said several journalists from different fields were interviewed in order to identify the most common struggles they face when reporting data.

The Office of the Press Secretary recognizes the fact that the proliferation of fake news and misinformation is a serious issue that needs to be addressed.

OPS officer-in-charge (OIC) Cheloy Garafil said they are planning to implement several programs aimed at fighting misinformation and fake news after the recent Pulse Asia survey showed that 90 percent of Filipinos believes that fake news is a problem.

The e-book for journalists is expected to at least lessen errors and thus, misinformation, in the reporting of statistical data.

The guide contains tips as well as tools to help those in the mainstream media and social media, to improve their numerical skills so they could better understand data and be able to report them in a more effective manner.

It also tackles statistical reporting, common calculations, fact-checking, and data visualization.

The guide can be downloaded for free on the website bit.ly/Journalist-Numbers-Guide. (PNA)